


Making Friends

by Frumion_III



Series: The Granger-Riddle Alliance. [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Hermione, BAMF Ron Weasley, Chess, Childhood Friends, Civil Rights Movement, Dark Hermione Granger, Dark Magic, Gen, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Hermione Granger-centric, Hogwarts Era, Hogwarts Inter-House Friendships, Insane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Mudblood supremacy, Muggleborn Rights, Not Time Travel, Overthrowing the government, POV Hermione Granger, POV Third Person Limited, Passionate Hermione Granger, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Platonic tomione, Possessive Tom Riddle, Pre-Hogwarts, Ravenclaw, Ravenclaw Hermione Granger, Ravenclaw supremacy, Ritual Magic, Sane Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle & Hermione Granger, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning, Witchcraft, chessmaster Ron Weasley, coven magic, functionally insane voldemort, he's definitely mad but he knows exactly what he's doing, hp era, saner Tom Riddle than cannon, well kinda, wizardry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 51,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28836741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumion_III/pseuds/Frumion_III
Summary: In one world Tom Riddle's diary is content to sit in Malfoy Manor doing nothing for years. In another, it isn't. Fate can be a funny thing. In one world Hermione Granger enters the wizarding world knowing nothing about it. In another, she doesn't. One little action changes and the world changes with it. A darker dawn approaches.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Tom Riddle, Platonic tomione - Relationship, They are just friends - Relationship
Series: The Granger-Riddle Alliance. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114418
Comments: 205
Kudos: 243





	1. The first twist of fate.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've finished the second draft of my original novel. I'm decompressing with Fanfiction, except everything I've already started is either no longer fun for me to write or undergoing big reconstruction at the moment, hence the new project. I was just messing around with the idea of a horcrux!Harry plot when I stumbled into this idea instead. Hermione is a lot more like Tom Riddle than Harry is in all the ways that matter; studious, driven, vicious (she kept a woman in a jar for a year, she's no angel) and powerful. I just ran with that idea and here we are.

Lucius Malfoy had been having a perfectly normal day when he noticed the diary lying in his son’s playroom. He had only seen it once when his father was showing him the most heavily warded secrets in the manor shortly before his death, but he recognised it easily. Every page oozed black magic that made even him slightly uncomfortable. It would be a difficult thing to forget. Lucius didn’t know what it was exactly, his father had never explained beyond it belonging to their Lord, he could recognise enough black magic to know that it should not have been anywhere near his sole heir. If it had got out of the wards on its own, and Lucius suppressed a shudder at the possibility, it would do so again. He would need to move it. He was still looking at the diary with a kind of fascinated horror when Draco walked back into the room, and Lucius’ heart was suddenly in his throat. His movements were not little Draco’s usual lazy amble. Each of his small steps was too purposeful, too precise. Lucius swallowed and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. 

Draco whirled around, his usually sweet face twisted in anger as he glared up at Lucius. Too late the expression was smoothed away, but by then it did not matter. Lucius had seen his eyes. They were red. Not the eerie crimson of the dark lord mind you, but a dull terracotta that glinted with rage. Even if it had been the vivid red he remembered as his Lord's, he would have responded the same way. Nothing and no one could touch his son with this kind of dark magic. Lucius carefully summoned the diary. He didn’t know if what he was going to try would work, but it was the only thing he could think of. “Whatever you are,” he said loudly, heart racing and voice cold, “I know that you used this book to reach my son. If you do not leave him, I’ll summon a fiendfyre.” for a moment Draco’s eyes flared a sharper red, but then it drained away completely. When the proper blue dominated his son’s irises once more Lucius lowered his wand, dropped the diary and swept his son into an embrace. Draco was safe. 

He didn’t tell Narcissa. She would destroy whatever it was, Dark Lord’s possession or not, and he couldn’t risk that in case their Lord was returned to them in the future. Instead he cast a heavy notice me not charm over himself and disapperated from the Manor. He reappeared in the middle of a bustling street full of muggles and shuddered, careful not to touch any of them. Striding purposefully through the crowd, he made his way towards one of their many bookshops. Where better, after all, to hide a book of black magic than among muggle texts in central London? No one would ever think to look there. He chose his bookshelf and began to put put wards around the book. His father had told him to keep it safe, had made him take an oath that he would, and this was the only way he could see to do it while keeping his family safe as well. The diary radiated rage, but as he completed his second ward it began to feel muted and soon Lucius had nothing left to do save find himself a pain relief potion for the splitting headache he now had. He disapperated softly and the world spun on, unaware. 


	2. Meeting Tom.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione has an eventful birthday.

Hermione Granger was walking down Piccadilly Circus on her ninth birthday when the feeling started. September the nineteenth had fallen on a Monday this year, so they had only the hours after school to celebrate it, but that was more than ok by Hermione. Last year it had landed on a Saturday but no one had come to the party, and she was glad that this year she had an excuse not to plan one. Her parents had, instead, offered to take her to see Coriolanus at the national theatre. It was going to be great. As they turned a corner off the busy street, Hermione began to feel something strange. It was as if she were a tiny iron filing like the ones she had seen in science class and there was a magnet nearby. Something was pulling at her insides. She stopped short. “Mum,” she began earnestly, “We need to go that way.” Her mother laughed.

“We’ll be late dear.” 

“Please can we just go around this corner? I want to explore, and it is my birthday.” She pointed out. Her mother laughed again and pulled her into a one armed hug. 

“Alright dear, but if we’re late I don’t want to hear any complaining.”

The pull took Hermione around a corner and half way down the street, her mother walking briskly beside her. Hermione stopped short, the pulling feeling insisting that she enter the shop she had stopped in front of. It was, strangely enough, a bookshop that looked like it specialised in classics. Hermione turned an imploring expression on her mother. “Can we go in?” 

“We’ve already been in three today dear, and we’ll be late to the show.”

“This is different.” Said Hermione, itching to just let go of her mum’s hand and run across the wide street. The urge was unusual. Hermione took road safety very seriously, and she knew it would upset her mum if she ran off. The urge intensified, now almost painful. “Please?” She asked, and discovered to her embarrassment that there were tears in her eyes. “I have to.” Her mother’s face softened and Hermione tried not to see the pity in her eyes. Her mum thought this was about Sarah and Jada declining their invitations.

“All right darling, but just this one. Let’s see what we find.” Her mum’s voice was brighter than her eyes. Hermione beamed and set of at a run, dragging her mother behind her in her effort to answer the pull she felt.

When they stepped into the cool interior of the shop Hermione realised she had been wrong. It wasn’t the shop pulling at a part of her chest. It was something inside it. She followed the pull to where it was strongest, her movements trancelike until, without quite knowing what she was doing, she had put her hand onto the narrow spine of a small leather book. The moment she touched it a wave of warmth had emanated from it into her arms and Hermione grinned widely. It felt strange, like the feeling of sinking into a bath that is slightly too warm or tasting pickled ginger when you are expecting plain food. Hermione decided that she rather liked it. It made her feel like she had stumbled into a story of her own. It felt almost exactly how she had always imagined magic would feel. She pulled it off the shelf and frowned. It had no title. She flipped it open and her frown deepened. It was blank. No, she realised as she looked down at the empty page, it looked blank. That didn’t mean it was, especially if this adventure followed the usual magic rules. Running back to her mother, Hermione waved the little book at her with another beaming grin. “I picked one, I picked one!” She said, then winced. This was a bookshop. She shouldn’t have spoken so loudly. Her mum’s eyes slid off the book like she couldn’t see it properly and shook her head fondly.

“Come on dear, let’s go then.” Hermione paused, eyes wide.

“But what about my book?”

“Which book dear? I thought you hadn’t found anything.” Said her mother gently.

Hermione had been on the point of showing her again when she stopped. If her mother hadn’t seen her waving it around, the she wouldn’t be able to see it now. Those were the rules. She was a bit disappointed that she couldn’t take her mum on whatever magical adventure this was, but then in books people rarely did have their mothers with them. They usually took their friends. She swallowed down what might have been a small sob. She would have a grand magical adventure, friends or no friends, and she didn’t have time to be sad. The game, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, was afoot. She quietly slid the book inside her coat, hoping that the shopkeeper wasn’t a part of her quest. As luck would have it, he wasn’t.

Hermione usually loved Shakespeare. She especially loved Coriolanus, which is why she had been so excited for her birthday in the first place. Her mother hadn’t initially approved of her favourite Shakespeare play, considering it too bloody for a nine year old to like, but she’d come around. After all, it was only pretend. The effects at the National Theatre were incredible, as were the actors, but for once Hermione was not paying rapt attention to the stage. She was tracing meaningless patterns across the diary and wondering when her magical adventure would begin. She had felt a magical force compelling her into the shop. She had found a book that looked empty (but wasn’t really, it couldn’t be. That would spoil everything). She had even stolen it, which she knew was wrong, but which lots of book characters she liked were quite good at. She was sure she’d got the start of the adventure right. She had followed the mysterious feeling, found the mysterious book, and felt rather silly watching a normal Shakespeare play while she was waiting for a mysterious event to occur. The whole way home, her parents talked about the wonderful lead actor, and how compelling the sets had been but she said nothing. Hermione’s mum looked sad when they got home, and Hermione wished she had payed more attention to the show. Her mum probably thought she was sad no one from school had wanted to come. She had been, earlier, but that was before she felt the beginnings of the story she was sure she was in. She wished she could tell her mum, but she wouldn’t believe her anyway. Those were the rules.

By the time she had cut a careful slice of (low sugar) birthday cake for her and each of her parents, eaten it and thanked them both for a lovely birthday outing, Hermione was all but vibrating with curiosity. As soon as she got to her room she shut the door and put the black book on her desk. She opened it, closed it and asked it very politely to reveal its secrets, all to no avail. She flipped it over and noted with fresh enthusiasm that it was monogrammed with the initials TMR in fading gold. She rubbed the letter carefully, first touching each one individually and all at once, half hoping for a djinn. If there was a djinn, it failed to appear. Hermione took a seat and narrowed her eyes at the diary. It remained stubbornly ordinary. What had she not tried? She thought it over carefully, and then with a sinking feeling, changed her question. What was she doing wrong? She closed her eyes, pressed her hands against them until bright sparks of colour swam in her darkness and opened them again. It didn’t help. Rolling her eyes, she went to put the book aside when it hit her. It wasn’t a book at all, it was too thin and unadorned and most importantly of all it had no title. It was a notebook. And notebooks, she thought gleefully, were supposed to be written in. Leaping up, Hermione rushed to her bedside table, reached down the back of a tall stack of books (one of four to-be-read piles in her room) and pulled out her fountain pen set. After months of begging and the best test scores in her school, she had finally convinced her parents to buy it for her when the last summer holidays started. It was, of course, the only option when writing in a magical and hopefully not blank book of mysterious origin. She carefully attached the pen nib she had practiced most with and put in a capsule of ink. Then, holding her breath as she did so, she opened the book again and began to write.

‘ _My name is’_

Began Hermione, but then she paused. She absentmindedly put her pen to her lips to bite the lid before stopping herself. She was trying to break that habit, it was unbecoming. Names had power in lots of stories. Especially true names, but even given ones sometimes. She shouldn’t just write it down without thinking. Narrowing her eyes, Hermione thought through the little she knew about the diary and the lot she knew about how magical objects worked, at least in books. Eventually she decided on symmetry. 

‘ _HJG’_

She grinned. It was the same pattern as the letters on the back of the book, assuming they were initials of course. She had uncovered the clue just in time. while she had been breathing a sigh of relief, her initials had disappeared. Hermione blinked, shocked and checked again to make sure that she hadn’t somehow missed them. Then she held the book up to her lamp to see if her initials had left a watermark. They had not. Just as she put the notebook down, words began to reform on the page. They were decidedly not the words she had written. Hermione suppressed a shout of triumph.

‘ _Hello HJG. I’m TMR_ , _as I surmise you have guessed from your manner of introduction.’_

Hermione smiled slightly. Whoever TMR was, they sounded like someone out of a historical fiction, her second favourite genre. More words appeared on the page, the careful copperplate so much more practiced than her own. 

_‘My full name is Tom Marvolo Riddle. What’s yours?’_

Hermione bit her lip, unsure. On the one hand, she now knew his name and it would be terribly rude to refuse hers. On the other, he might have power over her if she told him her name. Who knew, when dealing with magical books that wrote back? Not Hermione. Eventually, and not without a great deal of hesitation, Hermione decided to give the book her name. After all, she had his, so if her had power over her because of her name then maybe she could learn to wield the same over him. 

_‘Hermione Jean Granger.’_

She wrote carefully before pausing again. She been on the point of asking what exactly Tom was, but then thought it might be rude. Whatever he was, he was clearly magical, and she had no interest in being cursed. As she was thinking this more of his slanted handwriting appeared on the page.

‘ _It’s a pleasure to meet a witch with such a beautiful name.’_

Hermione rolled her eyes at the compliment and then reread the whole thing, eyes widening. A witch? She was a witch? She had realised, of course that the book had to be magical, but she had not known that she was. As soon as Tom had mentioned it however, things that had previously been strange and unexpected began to fit a pattern. Really really wanting to find an overdue library book and opening her eyes to find it in front of her, when it absolutely hadn’t been the moment before. Hiding unsuccessfully from Jonathan in the playground and wishing he would go away, only to find that he was marching off in another direction. Wanting Sara’s stripy new backpack more than anything else and the other girl just offering it to her. She did have magic. Hermione blinked rapidly and looked back down at the notebook. What to ask? That was the question (whatever Shakespeare might have said on the matter) and Hermione at least didn’t know the answer. There were so many things she could ask that they were all jumbling together in her head, each fighting to be written first. Eventually she settled on one that she already had a hypothesis on, hoping that Tom would confirm it. 

_‘How did you know I’m a witch?’_

The words disappeared, replaced by a paragraph that appeared word by word, as if there was a ghost writing it down. She hadn’t noticed that before, but now that she had it was difficult to ignore. It made Tom seem more human, less like a notebook and more like someone having a conversation with her, albeit a written one. Hermione scanned the small written paragraph. 

‘ _I know you are a witch because I can feel your magic. I can’t see the world around me anymore, but I can feel magic when it appears. Quite apart from that, what else would you be? The diary is only visible to those of magical power. As you can imagine, I was rather bored before I felt your magic. That’s why I called out to you.’_

Hermione grinned. She had been right. Not only was the diary invisible to anyone who wasn’t magic, but the gut feeling need she ha felt had not been her imagination. Tom had been doing some kind of magic on her. Just as she was rereading the paragraph Tom had written down her father knocked on her bedroom door politely. “Come in.” She said, not bothering to hide the book she now knew for sure would be invisible to her father. He opened the door, eyebrow raised at the lights still on. Hermione checked her watch and gave him the same sheepish look she did every night when he found her still up, usually reading in bed. 

“Light’s out now, it’s been a long day.” He said with a pointed look.

“Ten more minutes?” She wheedled, making her eyes as big as possible in a pleading expression that was far too often used to have an effect. 

“It’s already past your bedtime.” 

“Please? It is my birthday after all.”

“Alright then, but only ten. And you’d better change into your pyjamas before I come back to switch the lights out. ” When he had shut the door she turned back to Tom and reread the paragraph he had written, his words still clearly visible on the page. 

The word 'a _nymore’_ seemed to stick out as odd. Tom couldn’t see _anymore._ Did that mean he had not always been a book? Hermione frowned. It would be horrible, to be trapped in the shape of a helpless notebook (or diary if Tom preferred that) if you hadn’t started out as one. She circled the word and began to write beneath his paragraph. 

_‘Were you always a book or are you trapped inside it? Was it a curse? It must be terribly lonely. I’m a bit lonely too sometimes, but I think you have it worse than I do. At least I can still move around if I like. Can you read? If I put you next to a book can you absorb the ideas inside it via osmosis? Or are you stuck without anything to read at all? If you are I’d hate to be in your position. Oh, I’m sorry if any of that offended you, but I’m ever so curious about you you know. You’re the first magical object I’ve ever met.’_

First his words and then hers began to fade, but no response seemed to be forthcoming. Hermione stared at the blank page, worrying at her bottom lip for a few minutes and then heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs. Glancing to the door, she quickly penned anotherfew lines. 

_‘I hope you’ll write back to me, but I might not see it until tomorrow morning. My mum’s coming up the stairs to tell me to go to bed now, and she checks to see if I actually do or not.’_

The following morning Hermione discovered, to her delight, that Tom had written back to her. She had got up very early, unable to sleep properly, and looked at the diary first thing. She had been worried that she had been too personal with her questions, but her fears had been for nothing. There was a paragraph waiting for her, as peppered with questions Tom had for her as hers had been. She smiled and began to read. 

_‘I was not offended, merely marshalling my thoughts. I began life as a wizard but how I came to actually occupy a book’s pages is all rather difficult to explain, especially since I don’t have a point of reference for your current understanding of magic. How old are you? How familiar are you with arcane magic? It is quite lonely in here, or at least it was until you wrote to me. I’m sorry that you’re lonely as well. I was too, when I lived with muggles as a child. People like us are different from them, and they tend to be cruel to people who are different. Is either of your parents magical? I always preferred books to people, but I can’t find that solace anymore. Sadly I can’t absorb knowledge of the books around me, and re-reading get’s a little boring after almost fifty years. I’d give anything to able to read something new. What are your reading at the moment?’_

Hermione felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. He hadn’t made friends as a child either, and people had ben mean to him like they had to her. It wasn’t because of anything she could control, that no one wanted to play with her at school, it was because she was a witch. The same thing had happened to him. Tom understood her. She wasn’t alone anymore. Tom had said _‘People like us’_ and the words made her feel warm all over. Hermione could not stop smiling. Reading through his words again, Hermione picked up her pen and thought carefully about her reply. 

‘ _I just turned 9, and I’m afraid I don’t know anything about arcane magic. If there are books on it I could learn though, it sounds fascinating. Would you want to be human shaped again, if you could?Do you think I could learn an enchantment that would help? Can you learn spells from books? I’ve never actually done a real spell, just made odd things happen, especially to people who were mean to me. Neither of my parents is magical, you've been quite close to both of them, and you didn't feel them, did you? I’m currently reading a book series called The Dragon Whisperer Chronicles, it’s about a girl who can speak to dragons. In her world people and dragons fight lots of battles together against hobgoblins. It’s fascinating. Do dragons really exist? Can anyone speak to them? Do hobgoblins really exist?’_

Hermione bit her lip and hoped that Tom wasn’t disappointed about how much she didn’t know, but before she could worry too much Tom’s curling handwriting was appearing below her own. 

_‘You seem very eloquent for a girl of 9, I’m impressed. I didn't feel any other magical signature, so it would appear that both your parents are muggle. I’m not sure that there is a way to become human once more, thought if there is I would like to find it. My research into soul magic didn’t say for sure, but it seems quite likely. When you attend Hogwarts, a magical school for British witches and wizards, you could help me look for a way to turn back if you want to. You can indeed learn magic from books, though an instructor can be very useful. I’d be happy to teach you some if you’d like. What did you do to the people who were mean to you? I never met a dragon, but they do exist and I think it’s more than likely that some people can speak to them. After all, I can speak to snakes so it would make sense that some people could speak to Dragons. I don’t know about hobgoblins, but goblins definitely exist. Some of them run a wizarding bank in London called Gringotts.’_

Hermione beamed. Dragons existed. Goblins existed. There was a whole magical world with a magical banking system hidden somewhere in London. They had schools for magic, a school she would one day attend, and Tom was offering to tutor her before hand. Tom could also speak to snakes, which was unbelievably cool. Hermione wanted to learn. Rereading what he had written, Hermione’s smile faded. Tom wanted to know what magic she’d already done, but Hermione wasn’t sure she wanted to say. Knowing what she did now, her magic had been quite mean really. Still, she could trust Tom. They were the same. Shaking off her doubts, Hermione picked up her pen once more. 

‘ _I forced a boy who was looking for me not to see me once. I was scared he as going to hit me again so I just thought ‘go away’ at him and then he did. I can make people believe whatever I’m saying too. I told everyone that one of the corners in the school library was off limits to students and now no one ever goes there but me. I think I once made a girl fall off the climbing frame too, but I didn’t know it would happen. I thought we were friends but she was just pretending for a joke, and I overheard her saying how ugly I was to her friend. Then I got really upset and she fell down, but I didn’t mean to do anything. I felt really bad about it._ _How old are you?_ _I’d love learn magic from you Tom. Do you need anything like a staff or wand to learn?’_

Hermione needn’t have worried about how Tom would see her. His response proved as much, and now she felt a little silly for having worried. Of course he understood. He was just like her. 

_‘I was sixteen when I made the diary, and I haven’t done much since then. I think I’ve been stuck like this for almost fifty years though, so I’m either almost seventeen or almost seventy depending on how you look at it. I did lots of similar things to what you’ve described when I was your age. I once broke a boy’s arm because he hit me all the time and my magic lashed out. It’s just your magic’s way of defending you, so don’t feel guilty about having done it. She deserved it really, she must have done if magic decided that you deserved revenge. You seem to be predisposed to mind magics, much like I was myself. It’s good that we’re so similar, it will make teaching you easier. Most people think that you do need a wand, but its not true. After all, you and I both did magic before getting one. More complicated spells require a wand, but rituals often don’t._

Hermione had been on the point of asking what rituals needed and if she could try one, quite flattered by Tom saying they were similar, when her mum opened her bedroom door. “Hermione it’s time to— oh. You’re already up. Come downstairs for breakfast.” 

“Ok mum,” Said Hermione dutifully, carefully closing the diary and taking it with her down the stairs. She didn’t want to leave Tom behind. The leather cover of the diary felt faintly warm to the touch, and Hermione smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are appreciated!! Your thoughts feed the muse!


	3. The colour of the world.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom gets some company.

Tom was a brilliant teacher. Hermione had learnt more in the first week she'd known him than she had since the school year started from all of her muggle teachers combined. He had a way of explaining magic that made things easy, and the longer Hermione spent practicing the little spells Tom had taught her, the easier it was to summon the magic up from where it lived inside her chest. It had taken her until a week before the October half term to learn to levitate pencils but after that it got easier. By the end of November she could make a cup of tea float next to her without spilling a drop, and Tom said he was very impressed. Hermione didn’t stop smiling for a week afterwards. He only ever said that when she had succeeded in learning something really complicated. It made her feel special.

He wrote endlessly of Hogwarts, the magical school he’d attended where he first felt truly at home. He wrote about it like one would a saviour, a friend. Once he told her that it had been the first thing he’d ever really loved, but Hermione didn’t want to pry too much into that. She knew very little about Tom’s childhood, but was aware of enough to know that it hadn’t been happy. He too had grown up in the muggle world that so utterly failed to understand them. Hermione very much would have liked to ask Tom about it, but he didn’t like to dwell on his past and it would have been very rude to bring it up out of the blue, so she didn't. Hermione wouldn’t force him to write to her about something he didn't want to, just to satisfy her idle curiosity. 

She asked him about Hogwarts instead and drank in his words avidly. He told her about the four houses, what they stood for and how their respective founder’s happy co-existence had shattered over an administration dispute and years of mounting resentment. He told her about Samhain feasts, the ritual rooms down in the depths of the castle dungeons and the tower lost in the clouds that no one had found the door to in a hundred years. He told her about other secrets too, like the rooms his ancestor Salazar Slytherin had built beneath the castle, and the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. Hermione came to love Hogwarts too, Tom’s fanciful tales pulling her in until she was almost as in love with the ancient castle as he was. 

She only had to mention circle theorems, which her maths teacher had leant her a booklet on just before the Christmas holidays had started, and Tom was off, telling her all about arithmancy classes that sounded a bit like maths where you could learn how spells were made. There was ancient runes, a key part of most rituals, real life alchemy and Tom's favourite; battle magic. She liked the times when he explained magical history, runes or arithmancy best, but Tom loved nothing more than to talk about battle magic. Whenever he spoke about it Hermione could tell by the hurried slant of the writing that he was rushing himself, his penmanship stumbling in his haste to explain this hex or that counter-spell. He could go on for pages about the best shield charms, or how you could adapt a household charm for duelling. Hermione wanted to learn it, but even Tom would admit that you needed a wand for duelling and she didn’t have one. Still, when she went to bed magical battles payed out on the underside of her eyelids and her mind swirled with incantations she could not practice. 

Tom knew lots about the magical world, and was willing to teach her all of it, but Hermione had a sneaking suspicion that he was not nearly as well versed in muggle academics. He knew very little about things like chemistry or physics, and of course he was missing the most recent half century of muggle history. He hadn’t said anything about it but Hermione knew that she would hate to be so poorly informed, so she had taken to collecting the odd clipping in the news about new scientific discoveries and reading much more about history than she usually did. Occasionally she slipped a fact into their conversations, never quite telling Tom she thought he should be more informed about the muggle world, but giving him enough to be curious. He hadn’t asked her about muggle history yet but she felt sure he would soon. He was just as curious as her. 

He was also the best kind of friend she could imagine having. She hardly had much of a frame of reference, but she didn’t think she needed one. He was wonderful, always there when she needed him with a lesson on magical history, a diagram of this or that rune or an interesting magical fact about whatever places they studied in Geography. Hermione didn’t feel like she was alone anymore, so much so that she hardly noticed she’d stopped trying to answer every question in class, preferring to write to Tom. It was a relief to write to someone who knew what it was like, being different. It was a relief to have a friend at long last.

_‘Tom,’_

She wrote one day in February after successfully unlocking an empty classroom for somewhere to sit and write without disturbances (she didn’t really understand Tom’s fixation on her learning this spell, but it was a very cool thing to be able to do.) She looked back at the now open door with pride for a moment before actually asking the question that had been needling her since Tom first mentioned it. 

‘ _Can you teach me to speak to snakes? I’m pretty good at the foreign languages they offer in school and I really want to learn.’_

After a long, almost hesitant pause Tom’s handwriting appeared beneath him and Hermione’s eyes went wide as she read what he had written. It seemed so much like something Tom would never say that she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. There were only three words, a resentful, sullen slant to the letters that brought a smile to her face. It seemed Tom was less than happy about having to write them. 

‘ _I don’t know.’_

_‘Do you think it’s too difficult for me?’_

Asked Hermione, not sure how else to respond to Tom’s strange lack of knowledge. 

_‘No, if I thought that I wouldn’t lie to spare your feelings Hermione. It’s important to be honest and realistic about ones limits when learning or teaching magic. I told you that I didn’t know because I don’t. I was born with the ability to speak to snakes, so I don’t know if I could teach you.’_

Hermione frowned. How on earth could someone be born speaking a language? That was ridiculous. Perhaps he’d learnt it when he was too young to remember. Or, she thought with a mite less skepticism, it was magic. Maybe normal rules didn’t apply to magical children. 

_‘How does that work?’_

She asked, wondering if Tom was going to know the answer. It was odd, realising that he didn’t know everything about magic. She had somehow believed that Tom was omniscient in that regard, he was so good at teaching the magic she had learnt so far, but it seemed silly now. He had only been sixteen when he made the diary after all. Even Tom couldn’t have learnt all of magic at sixteen. His response, when it came, confused her. 

_‘Do you know, it’s surprisingly difficult to explain now that you’re asking.’_

_‘So that’s it then? You can’t tell me?’_ Responded Hermione, dejected. 

_‘No,’_ There was a pause, and Hermione’s heart sank further. Then more ink bloomed across the page, vividly dark as if Tom were pressing a pen heavily into the paper as he wrote. _‘But I could show you.’_

The words were written with a flourish suffused with pride. Hermione was familiar with this version of his handwriting from her lessons. She had mentally dubbed it his 'professor' handwriting, not that she would ever admit it to him, and it only ever appeared when he had just figured out how to best explain something. Distantly Hermione heard the bell for class ring, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She had more important things to do right now than attend a maths class she already knew the material for. Hermione didn’t understand how Tom planned to show her anything, but she trusted him. Maybe he would have a scene appear on the page like a movie. She brightened up at the thought, and quickly replied. 

_‘How?’_

_‘Magic.’_

He wrote dryly. Hermione got the feeling he was laughing at her, but a wry smile was trying to appear on her face too, so she could hardly blame him. Of course he would be using magic. She needed to stop thinking like a regular person and start thinking like a witch. What had Tom called them? Muggles. 

_‘Ok.’_

As soon as the ink of her reply had faded into the paper the pages began to move of their own accord, and soon they were at a point in the book roughly a fifth of the way through. A date appeared in the corner and the seam where the two pages met began to glow. After that Hermione’s vision went black and she was surrounded by a rushing sound as if she were travelling at great speed. When she could see once more the sight that met her eyes was decidedly not the empty classroom she had been sitting in to write. 

She was standing at the foot of an oak tree that rustled in a breeze she couldn’t feel, looking out over a tangled mess of rooftops black with soot. They looked less real, the further they were from her. The nearer ones were realistic, if a bit grainy like old photographs were, but in the distance they took on the appearance of a sketch, messy lines drawn in grey ink and smudged at the edges. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned. It was a boy her own age with neatly parted dark hair and clothes the same faded grey as the distant buildings. He was the only thing here that looked close to real, his dark eyes dancing with glee as they met hers, but even he was slightly faded. It was Tom. It had to be. 

“Hello Tom.” she said, and held out her hand to him. He shook it with a solum expression. 

“Hello Hermione. It’s nice to finally meet you face to face.”

“How are we here? What magic did you do?” Asked Hermione after a pause, fascinated by the faded sepia tone of the grass and the way the sky blurred out behind her, clouds like tea stains on paper bleeding at the edges. 

“I pulled your mind into my memories. It’s a relatively easy use of mind magics.” 

“I thought you didn’t have magic of your own now that you’re a book?” Asked Hermione, wincing as she said it. She would hate to be reminded of not having magic, if it were her in Tom’s place. His shadowed eyes shone wetly for a moment before he blinked and turned away. 

“I can still do this. It was part of the spell that made me a— well. That made me what I am today.” 

“A what?” Asked Hermione, as curious as ever about magic. Tom swallowed, looking down at a patch of grass as if it had been the one to hurt him rather than her. A wave of guilt crashed over Hermione. 

“I’m sorry Tom. I’m just curious, but I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know you don’t like to talk about it.” She said, putting a hand in his as she spoke. He jolted at the touch but didn’t pull away, so very carefully Hermione put her arms around him in a hug. After a moment’s pause when all she could feel was how utterly still Tom was and how silent the space was where his heartbeat should be, he returned it. Tom pulled away after a few seconds, but he was smiling oddly as he did, so Hermione thought he was probably secretly pleased she had hugged him. He always mentioned how lonely the diary was, but she was inside it too now. It was the least she could do to give him a hug. It must have been fifty years since anyone had hugged him, and Hermione shuddered slightly at the thought. She didn’t ever want to know how that felt. 

“So where are we?” She asked, pushing away the realisation of how sad it would be, to be trapped inside the diary alone. 

“We’re in a park in London, it’s near the place where I grew up.” 

“It's incredible.” she breathed, and Tom smiled. 

“Thank you.” As he spoke a snake blinked into existence around Tom’s small shoulders, looking half way between a fine ink drawing and a photograph. Hermione jumped slightly and then leaned in, intrigued. 

Tom hissed, and the snake turned to look at him, it’s tongue flickering out to taste the air. “What did you say?” asked Hermione. 

“Hello, finest of serpents.” Replied Tom quietly, “It’s the standard polite greeting when you first meet a snake.” 

“Could you say it again?” Asked Hermione. Tom hissed again and she closed her eyes, trying to compartmentalise the different parts of the shifting sound. Hermione opened her eyes and bit her lip before attempting to mimic the sound. Tom laughed and shook is head, repeating it more slowly. Hermione only had too look at him to know she’d got it wrong again. After two more fruitless attempts Hermione had to admit that it wasn't working, but after asking Tom to repeat himself just once more, she took a different approach. She gritted her teeth, then began to hiss out each part of the sound he had made as an individual noise. Tom blinked at her, an oddly thoughtful expression on his face, but she pushed it away. She ran through them again, faster this time and smiled. It sounded right, at least to her. She took a deep breath and spoke the words in one go the way Tom had. When she looked at him to check he nodded, smiling widely, and the snake lying across his shoulders gave her an apprising look. After a pause during which Hermione felt she was being scrutinised by the snake, it returned the first part of the greeting. The part that Hermione now suspected meant Hello. She had done it. She had spoken to a snake. Hermione felt warm pride bloom in her chest. 

Tom smiled at her warmly and Hermione mirrored the expression. She still couldn’t really believe she had spoken the greeting right, especially when Tom’s hissing had sounded so incomprehensible at first. She sat down on the faded brown grass and looked up at Tom expectantly, waiting for her to join him. Instead he snapped his fingers and the park around them disappeared. For a moment Hermione’s vision was empty, a nothingness the colour of blank paper, then a room began to paint itself into being around them. It had high arching windows, soft grey curtains and shelves upon shelves of books. In a huge fireplace dominating one wall, a silent fire that gave off no warmth flickered into being and Hermione found herself seated on a sofa so comfortable she felt like she might sink into it forever. 

“Where are we now?” She asked, and Tom smiled. 

“We are in a room I found in Hogwarts that can become anything you want it to. I used to come here when I wanted to be alone, and it showed me this.” 

“Are the books replicas of ones in the library?” She asked, and Tom laughed, shook his head. 

“The opposite really. These books are ones that have, for one reason or another, been removed from the school library by the faculty. The castle will not let them be forgotten so easily however, and I’m willing to bet that they’ll still be here when you attend the school. It’s mostly ritual magic and parselscript.” Hermione looked around with a new respect for what Tom was showing her. 

Tom got up then and walked away from the fire, picked a book of one of the lower shelves and offered it to Hermione. She took it and stared at what she thought must be the title. It was not made up of english letters. Instead the script was made up of curling lines and dots, odd shapes and loops that trailed down like the letter g would if it were fighting with an s. She looked between it and Tom, then offered it back. “It looks so strange. Can you really read it?” He nodded, smiling slightly at her. 

“I’ll write out the greeting you figured out earlier in the back of the diary if you like, so you can practice reading parselscript.” Hermione nodded fervently. 

“You could write it out phonetically too, like the way I said it the first time and then add the corresponding characters beneath.” Tom smirked slightly and nodded. 

“Good idea.” He said, and Hermione beamed. He returned the book to a shelf and came back with another, this one a much battered volume with a fading cover that might have been red outside the faded colouration of Tom’s memory world. 

“This one is on luck rituals. I think you’d enjoy it, it’s a good introduction to older magic forms.” Hermione took it with a smile and opened it to the first chapter.

Hours passed as Hermione read through the first of the rituals, this one for good luck with the weather and then the second, which was a bad luck ritual that would make the wizard of choice clumsier. Pausing at the end of the chapter, Hermione looked up to find Tom scribbling what looked like very complicated mathematics down in a replica of the diary, a fountain pen much nicer than her own in his hand. He glanced up at her and then started, evidently not expecting her to be retuning his gaze. “You were right,” She said with a grin, “I am very much enjoying this book. Is it all bad luck rituals that take place under a waning moon or just this one?” 

“You’ll have to read through the rest to find out, won’t you?” Replied Tom easily, and Hermione pulled an exaggerated mournful expression. Tom laughed, and Hermione went back to her book. 

A few minutes later she looked back up, the weight of what she was doing finally occurring to her. 

“Tom, how can I be reading a book inside your memories? That wouldn’t work unless you remembered every word.” He grinned and Hermione’s eyes grew to huge proportions. “You don’t mean you can actually remember every word?” He quirked an eyebrow. 

“I have a very good memory.” He said, closing the replica of his diary. Hermione was instantly filled with jealousy so powerful it made her want to cry. Tom's memory was more than good. It was eidetic. 

“You’re lucky.” she said quietly, trying her best to conceal the jealousy she felt. Tom gave her an oddly cold smile in return. 

“I did a ritual to get it. I haven’t forgotten anything since my twelfth birthday. It was actually the first ritual I ever did.” 

“Wow, can I do it?” Said Hermione instantly. Tom frowned and Hermione felt suddenly unsure, but pressed forwards anyway. “Or do you need to be somewhere magical to try?” 

“It wasn’t a pleasant experience Hermione, mind magic rituals rarely are. You should wait until your at least the same I was when I did it.” Hermione made a face but could admit that Tom probably had a point. Of the two of them, she could hardly claim to know more about magic.

She settled back into the book, the scratching of Tom’s pen a quiet reminder that she was spending time with her friend even as a comfortable silence descended once more. She read for another hour before finally closing the book, having reached a relatively good place to stop. “I should go, it’s been ages.” She said. Tom looked up, a hurt expression concealed too slowly for Hermione not to spot it. 

‘Yeah.” he said quietly, and Hermione smiled sadly at him. 

“I’ll write back as soon as I wake up, I promise.” She said, not wanting her friend to feel like she was abandoning him or anything like that. He rolled his eyes as if she hadn’t needed to say anything, but she saw a pleased look scatter across his features as she turned away. After that Tom’s world went dark to her once more and Hermione felt a lurch as if she were falling. 

This time the rushing noise lasted longer, as if she were traveling through an endless nothingness instead of snapping back into her body the way she had into the diary. It lasted just long enough for Hermione to start panicking before she slammed back into the physical world. As she became more aware, she realised that she was lying on what felt much too lumpy to be her own bed. There was a beeping noise coming from somewhere to her right and she could hear a muttered conversation beneath the clinical tones. She blinked slowly, a pale blue curtain and a white ceiling coming into focus as she did so. For a moment she just stared at the colours, not really seeing the whole picture. Then it began to sink in where she was. It must be a hospital. Why was she in hospital? She wriggled around a bit and didn’t notice any pain except an odd ache in her chest where her magic came from. She sat up, half expecting the pain to worsen. Thankfully it did not, but she hadn’t moved further than to swing her legs down off the bed before her mother and father came through the privacy curtain around her bed. As soon as her mother saw her sitting up she flung her arms around Hermione, tears tracking down her cheeks. Hermione bit her lip, feeling unaccountably guilty about her mum’s reaction. 

“What happened?” She asked.

“We were rather hoping you could tell us dear,” Said her father. “You were found non-responsive in an empty classroom at school without a scratch on you.” Hermione’s mind raced. It had to be because Tom had pulled her mind into the diary. She hadn’t even been thinking about what would happen to her the real world, but when her mind had gone into the diary to meet Tom it must have left her body unconscious. 

“Oh,” she said absently, realising that she had yet to respond to her fathers words, “No I’m not sure. I remember the bell going for maths and then...” she shrugged helplessly, knowing that she couldn’t explain any of it to her parents. She didn’t even really know how it had happened herself, and they wouldn’t believe her even if she did. How exactly did her mind enter the diary anyway? She thought to herself as her mother finally let go, and speaking of which, where had Tom got to? That thought sent a cold jolt of fear through her bones. To her shock Hermione felt her eyes fill with tears. 

“Did you bring my school things with you?” she asked suddenly, and the question startled a laugh out of one of the nurses who had heard the commotion of her waking. 

“Yes dear, we’ve everything you had with you when you collapsed.” Said her mother, unfazed by the question. “But you’ll have to let the doctors do a few more tests before you strain your eyes reading anything.” 

“But Mu- _um_.” Began Hermione, but on this her mother would not budge. 

“When the doctors either understand why you collapsed, discharge you or both, you can have your book bag back. Until then you’ll have to try and get better.” 

“I feel fine.” Said Hermione, and it was the truth. She felt as if she’d had a full night’s rest, but her parents didn't seem all that interested in what she had to say on the matter. 

It took hours before the doctors finally admitted that there was nothing physically wrong with her, and even when they did it was with baffled expressions. If they had just listened she would already be at home by now, but she was stuck watching her parent’s anxiously ask the doctors for medical advice. As she put her hands into her schoolbag and felt a reassuringly warm corner of the diary, Hermione made herself a promise. From now on, she was definitely only going into the diary when she knew it wouldn’t cause this kind of fuss again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this got written quickly, but here we go anyway. Let's see how long this writing pace lasts! Comments are appreciated, they feed the muse. 
> 
> Many thanks to anyone coming here from my Gellert Grindelwald origin story, you're all fantastic. If you're not coming here from that you should go check it out!! 
> 
> See you in hell,  
> Frumion_III


	4. An unexpected offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione performs her first ritual, gets a chess set and finally figures out how to help Tom.

Winter quickly faded into spring, April keeping the muggle children inside with almost ceaseless rain. It irritated Hermione, as they tended to make far more noise than she would like when they all trooped into the library she had always privately thought of as hers. Her parseltongue, though rudimentary, had finally got good enough to have fairly reliable, if stilted conversations without Tom’s help. She had only managed to offend the memory of Tom's favourite snake once by mistranslating something in the last month, something Hermione was very proud of because she had never met a snake as conceitedly supercilious as Nagini. True, she had not met many snakes, but surely not all of them would be as pedantic as the one Tom got on best with over grammar. In fact, she was privately sure that Tom had told her to feign ignorance if her parseltongue wasn’t grammatically perfect, but as much as Nagini’s perfectionism irritated Hermione she couldn’t deny how much it was helping her. 

The spring equinox crept up on her almost before she was ready to try her ritual, bringing with it a rush of power. Hermione was to do her first ritual under the sallow cloud’s of London’s night, painted a dull rust brown by the lights of the city reflecting up into the chill evening. She began to draw out the ritual circle in her garden, having climbed out of her bedroom window to do so at Tom’s insistence, despite knowing very well where the garden keys were kept. Tom had pointed out that it decreased the risk of being caught, but Hermione thought it might have more to do with the fact that Tom liked nothing better than to sneak around. Any excuse, she knew, would send him off on tangents about this or that method of eavesdropping, or how to walk across creaky floorboards without making a sound. It was as much a part of him as his love of battle magic, or his passion for history, though definitely less magic-related. Hermione thought it delightfully childish of him, not that she would ever tell him that. Tom behaved very maturely most of the time, so much so that Hermione frequently forgot that he wasn't actually all that much older than her, give or take his time as a diary. It was always nice to see a more childish side of him, especially as he was already so giddy about her first ritual.She finished the last of the chalk lines with a flourish, putting aside her train of thought to double check that her rune circles were in the right place against the diagram Tom had willed into being on one of the diary’s pages. 

They had chosen a simple enough ritual, one that harnessed the innate power of spring for familial good luck. It was the last ritual in the little book that had introduced her to the oldest branch of magic, and it felt right that her first ritual would be something from that. Tom had agreed, liking the neat, almost arithmantic way it all fit together as a plan. Now that the chalk was done, all the ritual would need was a spell-fire made from her magic and a drop of her blood, which she readily provided. It made a hissing sound as it hit the fire, which was by now happily racing along the fine chalk lines she had drawn as if they were traced with one of the fire-starters her father always claimed he didn’t need to use when they went camping during summer. The flames flared up dark red, then royal blue just as the book had said they would before burning through back to a more natural orange before dying away completely. Hermione looked down at her hands and blinked in shock at the film of gold that had settled over her. Even as she watched it sank into her skin and she smiled to herself under the starless sky. She had done her first ritual now. Only time would tell if it would work. 

Back when she had first gone into the diary they had discovered that, very very usefully, Hermione’s body could rest while she went into the diary at night. It became something of a routine. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually gone to sleep, but she no longer needed to. It was brilliant. She had always quietly resented the wasted hours her body forced her to spend sleeping, and now Tom had found a solution for that too. He never had to sleep either on account of not having a body anymore, and Hermione secretly revelled in this most recent addition to the growing list of similarities between them. Tom was the most intelligent person she knew, and she wanted to know just as much as he did. Her efforts to teach him about the muggle world were slow-going because she was very easily side-tracked by learning about magic most days, but Tom knew at least who had won the second world war now as well as a little modern science. It was a slow work in progress made slower by the fact that unless she copied out whole books, Tom would never be able to understand the modern world to the extent that he would like to, and she could only imagine how frustrated he must be by her condensed summaries. 

It was partially due to this problem of Tom’s boredom, that Hermione was so glad her parent’s had hired a new nanny after the collapsing incident. It had always upset her slightly in the past, that her parents worked such long hours, but since meeting Tom she had come to see the benefits of such an arrangement. She loved them of course, but being left mostly to her own devices was all she wanted most of the time. Freya had moved away at Christmas, and Jenny, the new nanny, didn’t try to get her to play out or talk about her day. She was quite content to sit in the living room watching television or whatever else she did, leaving Hermione free to spend as much time as she liked inside the diary. Her presence also offered Hermione an unexpected opportunity. She got to try mind magic for the first time. 

She had wanted to try mind reading, or Legilimency as Tom insisted was its proper name, since he had told her what it was, but apparently that would have to wait. Tom had vetoed that idea, pointing out both that minds were pretty fragile and if anything went wrong he wouldn't be able to help. While Hermione had been sulking he suggested an apparently much easier alternative. Implanting a thought in someone else's mind.

She had already done something like it to the children at school when she convinced them that a part of the library was out of bounds. Now she would try, with Tom's help, to recreate her accidental mind magic. The idea they had decided on was simple. Tom thought she should have a chess set. He had been almost offensively scandalised on learning that she had never played chess, and had immediately spent the next two hours alternately extolling its virtues and explaining its rules. As his rant entered its third hour she'd had to stop him from drawing any more diagrams of chess strategies, her head spinning. That only meant Tom was more anxious that she try the mind magic, her lack of comprehension only cementing his determination to teach her to play. Hermione had never tried it because her parents, both busy people who preferred scrabble when they had the time, didn't own a set, and she was quite excited. Hermione spent the morning obediently sitting in bed reading one of her many books on modern history, waiting for the right moment to strike. When the nanny went downstairs to make coffee Hermione decided that she had procrastinated for long enough over trying the magic and began the enchantment.

She reached down into her chest where the magic lived and pulled it out, focusing on her desire for a chess set. She had never played chess, and she wanted to learn. Everyone should get the chance to play chess. Chess would be fun to play that afternoon. As gently as she could, which Tom had stressed was very important in mind magic to avoid discovery, she pushed the idea downstairs and a bit to the left, towards where Jenny would be in the kitchen. After that all she could do was wait on tenterhooks to see if it had worked.

It had.

Not twenty minutes after she had tried it, Jenny was wandering up from the kitchen and oh so incidentally mentioning chess. Hermione's eyes grew wide. She had put that thought into Jenny's mind with only force of will. She had made her think it. "Chess? I've never played." She said, and then with mounting curiosity, "What made you think of it?"

"I know you're a smart kid Hermione, my boyfriend's brother likes it and you're kind of remind me of him a bit. Just as much of a bookworm. The idea just popped into my head I suppose." Hermione grinned at Jenny's words, they were truer than she would ever know and Hermione had never been able to resist dramatic irony.

"I'd like that. Can we go today? Where would we even buy a chess set?"

"John Lewis should have some, and there's one just off Sloane Square. I don't think your parents would want me to take you out right now, but I could get one on my way home and bring it tomorrow if you like." Jenny was probably being as nice as she was able to be, but Hermione was determind now.

She blinked slowly and again pushed her intent towards the nanny. Going out for a bit wouldn't matter. No one would find out. This time Hermione had a front row seat to the visible effects of her magic, and it was utterly fascinating. Jenny had eyes a bit like Hermione's, but when she magic took root in the woman's mind they filmed over, clouded by a grey that paled her irises like a fog. She blinked twice and shot Hermione a furtive smile. "Look, why don't we nip out for it now? It's not too far." Hermione grinned. It had worked again. That meant her skill was repeatable or reproducible (something she knew was important from learning all about the scientific method in class, but could never remember which was which). She could really do it.

_'It worked'_

Scrawled Hermione, too excited to make herself write the news of her success neatly. Tom was quick to reply, Hermione all but glowing with pride at his words.

_'I'm impressed, that was very advanced magic.’_

No matter how much mind magic she practiced, it turned out, Hermione could not actually change people’s opinions on things, or more accurately, she could not change their opinions on her. She had found out the hard way that magic couldn’t make people like her any more than anything else she had tried. It could make them leave her alone, if she put enough force into it, but the effects always wore off in roughly an hour and their disjointed confusion only made them more vicious when the magic wore off. Jackson had twisted her arm up behind her back when he snapped out of the spell as she was walking past, and it had hurt so much Tom had felt it just from her magic. He had joked that she should throw him down the year six stairwell in retaliation, but Hermione would have preferred a serious plan. She hadn’t been able to write properly for a week, and there had been questions. Why no one could understand that telling on them only ever made it worse, she didn’t know, and it just made everything harder to see her teachers throwing her such concerned glances. Tom was the only one who understood. They were the same. 

In the following months Hermione read up on chess almost to the point of fanaticism. Summer had snuck up on her without her quite knowing where the time had gone, and it was almost the end of term. She barely noticed, too wrapped up in the new refuge from the world she’d found in a set of 64 black and white squares. Her slight (or not so slight) obsession with chess had more to do with her determination to beat Tom than any real love for the game. The only small problem with that plan was the unfortunate fact that Tom absolutely loved chess. He was also, she could tell after reading a few of her books, a very very talented player. She had never won a game against him. He often had a board set up when she arrived with pieces scattered or scarred from games he had played both sides of. 

Hermione knew, though she had never quite got him to admit it, that chess had been one of the few things that continued to be entertaining after spending so long trapped inside the diary. That meant beating him was going to take a lot of work. She studiedthe games of grandmasters, making her painstaking way through the logic of each move and counter move. She played games against herself outside the diary every night before she went down to see Tom. She found out, quietly, that her school librarian had a passion for the game and often played him on sunnier days when the library was empty save the two of them. 

It all came to a head one evening an hour and a half after she’d gone into the diary. Magical chess had funny and oddly vicious moving pieces, which were fascinating in their own right, but she was used to them by now. What she was not used to was seeing Tom like this. There was something she didn’t recognise glistening in his eyes, and when he looked at her it felt odd. Something had changed. She took his remaining castle and carefully avoided his eyes. Something flickered across his face, his mouth trying to form two expressions at once before settling into a smile. His throat bobbed. She smiled and moved her last night into position. It was almost over. She was going to win. Then Tom started to smile and she looked down at the board, willing herself to see her mistake. When she saw it she could have screamed. She’d focused too much on her offence strategy after dancing out of his last check, and she had thought she was a move from an inevitable Mate. Her carelessness had let him queen a pawn and there was nothing between it and her king. As if echoing her thoughts, the little white figurine lifted the crown from its head and tossed it to the floor. Hermione scowled, furious with herself. She’d really thought she had it that time. She had been so sure she was going to win. 

Tom was still looking at her with that odd, considering stare, but Hermione barely noticed it. She hadn’t studied hard enough. Tom had won. “How did you think of that threefold after transitioning out of the Reti opening so fast? No one’s got that close to beating me since the Gryffindor McGonagall left Hogwarts. You don’t play like that.” He asked suddenly, jolting her out of her internal commiserating.

“I studied.” 

“What, a compendium?” 

“It was the mid-game in a recent grandmaster’s championship game. I read about it in the London quarterly.” Something in Tom’s face twisted, a horrible, desperate jealousy rising to the surface. Hermione winced. She suddenly felt a bit like she’d been cheating, using all this information he had no access to, to try and beat him at the one game that had kept him sane for almost half a century. Tom’s eyes drained of life, their usually laughing terracotta crushed by a blank, empty kind of grief Hermione knew she couldn’t fully comprehend. She briefly entertained the thought of offering to copy out the game play in full, but pushed it away. It wouldn’t help, not really. He deserved more than the scraps she could copy out.

Tom shrugged off the mood he’d fallen into, offering to teach Hermione the theory behind jinx modification before she had to return to the real world, but she didn’t really pay the lecture much attention. She was thinking about the diary and how it worked. She had been staring off into the parchment-toned middle distance of the memory room, not listening closely enough to realise Tom’s silence was the expectant kind that followed a question when it hit her. She was inside his memory, inside the diary, but her body wasn’t. Surely then, if her mind could travel out of her body into the diary to meet Tom face to face, his mind could follow hers back to the real world. 

“Well?” Asked Tom, growing impatient. Hermione began to smile. 

“I’ve just figured out a way to get you your books.” 

“That’s not—” began Tom, but Hermione couldn’t bare to hear him say it wouldn’t work. Not when she hadn’t even told him her theory yet. 

“I come down into the diary. Why don’t you come up into my head? That way you could read with me.” 

Tom froze. There was no other word for the sudden, total stillness that seemed to radiate from him outwards into the room he had constructed for them. The heatless flames dancing in their cozy grate stopped flickering, suspended in a single moment. The silence that had followed her words took on new dimensions, dimensions she hadn’t been been aware of until she felt them wrap around her. “Tom?” she asked hesitantly, “Are you alright? Do you think it could work?” After another pause during which Hermione got progressively more worried about her friend, he found his voice. Shock choked his words, shock and something else, an emotion Hermione couldn’t quite put her finger on. He cleared his throat and tried again. 

“You’re offering, offering to let me possess you?” He asked. The expression she hadn’t been sure of identified itself then in his raised eyebrow and hoarse, whispered question. It was incredulity. Hermione smiled softly at him. 

“I’m offering to share my head. You share yours with me, it’s only fair.” 

Tom blinked dully at her, incomprehension in every line of his expression. “Hermione,” He began, his voice wavering slightly. Hermione’s eyes went wide, worried she’d somehow injured his pride. She had been on the point of offering an apology when he found his voice once more. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” His grateful litany forced all her breath out of her in a sigh of relief, but before she could respond he had taken a step towards her. After a moment he raised his arms tentatively and took another step. Hermione closed the rest of the distance between them, running into his proffered hug with a wide grin. 

“When do you want to do it?” She asked, her voice muffled as she spoke into his shoulder. It wasn’t the most elegant she’d ever sounded, but Tom never initiated hugs. It would feel wrong to be the one to end this uncharacteristic, tactile display of affection from her friend. Tom tightened his arms around her as he replied, practically vibrating with what could only be anticipation.

“There’s no time like the present.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL, did you like it? How do we feel? Comment below to feed the muse and share your wonderful thoughts. I'm always exctatic to get a review


	5. Tom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Musings of a grateful horcrux.

Hermione Granger was an enigma. Tom had taken to wearing far less of a mask around her than he had expected to with a nine year old, but it was still very much present. Half the time when they spoke or wrote, Tom felt like he was talking to a reflection of himself at her age. He’d never met anyone like him, muggles and wizards alike two-dimensional in comparison. He was better than the others, the only real person in a world of repeating patterns wearing faces. It had always been that way. Even when he discovered that there were other people who could access magic, it only fooled him into thinking he had found actual people for the time it took to walk down Diagonally. Hermione was different. Just as gifted at magic as him, just as hungry for knowledge and almost as isolated as he had been, Hermione Granger was another real person. The only other real person he’d ever met. The weight of it could crush him sometimes, the knowledge that he was no longer alone. 

Then something would shift and he found he didn’t understand her at all. She cared far more than she would have liked to admit, what the filthy muggle children at her school thought of her, despite being superior to them in every way. She wanted desperately to have friends too, which even at Hogwarts when he had more of a chance, Tom had never really been very interested in. It was baffling. Stranger still, she was a mudblood with far more power than the Malfoy heir he had possessed, more raw power than any of the Slytherin first years he had known at school. She was clever, just like him, with none of the hang-ups about ritual magic he had expected her to have when he found out what she was. She seemed to accept magic as a reality without surprise, and again he had been reminded forcibly of his own reaction to learning about the hidden world of wizarding Britain. Hermione too had known she was _special_ long before finding Tom. 

She was also, Tom decided as he followed her mind back along the channels between her body and the diary, a kind of insane he’d never met before. She had volunteered to be possessed. Of course she didn’t know what the diary had been designed to do, but even muggles knew enough to be wary of possession. He remembered well the exorcisms of his youth, and surely things couldn’t have changed that much in half a century. Why then, had Hermione not balked at the word? He could only put it down to a wholly undiscovered species of madness.In an instant, the rushing blackness between the diary and Hermione’s body was gone and for the first time in fifty years Tom was looking out at the physical world _._

It was raining. It was raining, and Tom could hear the pattering raindrops hitting the glass of the window, could see their distortion of the scene beyond it. He willed Hermione’s body to move towards the window, and after a moment it did, the motion stuttering. _“What are we doing?”_ Asked Hermione. Hearing her voice honestly surprised Tom. He had honestly expected to be alone in her body, the way he had ben when he had possessed the little Malfoy brat. Perhaps her consent had twisted the magic of his control. He’d never imagined anything like this when he made the horcrux, never seen it written down or hinted at, even in Harpo The Foul’s parseltongue journals. He suspected that they were the first to do anything like it. It would actually make an interesting study of soul magic, if an unpublishable one.

_“I was going to open the window.”_ Thought Tom back, and Hermione hummed in understanding. Then her body was moving, so much more smoothly now that he and Hermione were both trying for the same thing. Together they moved to the window, unlatched the lock and then it was open. Tom pushed the glass upwards, took a deep breath of achingly sweet air and extended her small hand out into the rain. They stood by the window for a long time, Tom revelling quietly in the sheer amount of things he could feel and see as Hermione smiled. The rain was cool against Hermione’s skin, lighting up nerve endings Tom hadn't had for fifty years. He cupped her hands, watching with wild glee as water pooled in hands he controlled. He was real again. He existed. 

He could feel things inside the diary to some extent, knew when Hermione was touching the cover, or what a substance was if it happened to fall against an open page, but it wasn’t like this. Eventually Hermione turned away from the window, her own movements just as halting as his own had been when he had acted alone. Just as fast on the uptake, Hermione stopped forcing her body to move. _“Come on Tom,”_ She thought at him, the words echoing with impatience, _“I’ve got books for you on my desk.”_ He spun around, Hermione’s joy echoing his own as they raced across her room. Tom flickered her eyes around the room, a faint, steady burn of envy taking shape. This was almost exactly the sort of room Tom would have loved before Hogwarts. An entire wall of bookshelves dominated the room, cork boards pinned with notes and pictures jostling for space on the wall above the desk. A utilitarian pen knife sat on the desk between a small model of The Cutty Sark and an odd multicoloured cube who's faces were split into 25 smaller squares. It was clearly some kind of puzzle, and Tom was curious. Next to the odd cube, however, was something he cared about a lot more. Books. New books. 

The one on the top of the pile looked like a history textbook of some kind, and Tom laughed to himself. This was another attempt in Hermione’s devious plan to explain the muggle world to him. To provide muggle history books after he had been so deprived of fresh words for so long was, he could admit, a highly effective way of doing it. She was really quite good at slipping things like to moon landing (which had, Tom would grudgingly admit, truly impressed him) into conversation, and this was another example of her first forays into manipulation. She had proved as good at it as she had at everything else, though it was a softer, more beguiling version of manipulation than he’d ever tried at her age. Then again, he hadn’t had the opportunity. Everyone at the orphanage feared him too much by the time he was nine to trust anything he gave them. Shaking off his musings, he flipped open the textbook to the contents page, scanned down it and sank into the first chapter.

Tom read well into the night without pause, consuming this history book and that chess guide, this science textbook or that book on muggle politics. Hermione had clearly been collecting for this moment, and it made Tom’s insides warm, a sensation he really couldn’t see the point of. Neither of them noticed that the night was slipping away from them until the sun began to rise, painting light across the rain-wet leaves of Hermione’s garden. It was odd, how her eyes blurred as the hours drifted past, trying to close. It took Tom an embarrassingly long time to realise that Hermione’s body was getting tired, the feeling so alien after fifty years without a body that he hardly remembered this feeling. Hermione too seemed surprised, then apologetic about her body’s need for sleep but Tom would not hear an apology. _“You’ve nothing to be sorry for Hermione,”_ He thought earnestly, _“You’ve given me a wonderful gift today.”_

Once he was back inside the diary he smiled. She had given him a wonderful gift today, the only real witch he knew, but there was a long way to go yet. There was much he needed to do, much more he would like the chance to try, and several interning bits of magic he would like to introduce Hermione to before they got to Hogwarts. She was already so strong, so much like him that it hardly seemed like it would take much work, moulding Hermione into the perfect apprentice. After all, he always had wanted to be a teacher. He flung himself onto a hastily imagined sofa and began to plot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short, but it felt like I had reached the end of the scene. Next chapter will be from Hermione's perspective as usual. What did you think of Tom's POV, would you like to see more of it?


	6. I can make them hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The consequences of chewing gum.

As the summer holidays rushed past, Tom and Hermione found a balance that worked while sharing a physical form. It had been odd, getting used to sharing a body. Initially they had tried a 50/50 split of control, but when they did their jerking, unsteady movements reminded Hermione of the Jitter Girls, her favourite villain from the Skullduggery Pleasant books. She mentioned them to Tom, who after reading the entire series, revealed that the origin story of the Jitter Girls hit slightly too close to home. He had grown up in the thirties like them, and was almost sent to an asylum when he was nine. That was a big part of why he was so wary of muggles. She didn’t think her parents would send her anywhere like that, but they weren’t going to take that chance. She wasn’t mad, and she wouldn’t let anyone think otherwise. After hearing more about where Tom’s fear came from, Hermione took keeping their new arrangement secret a lot more seriously. 

It was much easier to move if only one of them had control, but that turned out not to mean only one of them could be in the real world at once. Tom had discovered that he could lurk in the back of Hermione’s mind, seeing through her eyes without assuming partial control of her limbs. He could project his thoughts from there, assuming a role as the voice in her head (insane as that sounded, it was the easiest way to describe what it felt like) She could do the same when he was at the helm, but they had to be more careful with that one. When Tom was more present than she was, Hermione’s eyes switched from their dull brown to a fascinating kind of red. It could look almost rust-brown until she stood in sunlight, but when she did glints of blood red became apparent, the copper and terracotta so much more vibrant than they were in the diary. Hermione liked how it looked, but red tinted eyes had the potential to bring unwanted scrutiny so Tom usually lingered in the back of her mind.

They spent the summer reading, Hermione’s plan to get Tom up to speed on muggle history working like a charm, but all too soon the holidays came to an abrupt end and they were thrown back into the melee that was muggle primary school. Hermione didn’t know why she’d expected anything new from the insipid muggle children she was forced to label her peers, but she was disappointed. They were the same, uninspired nasty little brats they always had been, running around in their cliques and making too much noise. They had been back for less than a week when the others started in on her again. 

As Hermione put her pen down, having finished the last of the laughably easy maths problems the class had been set, one of the people sitting at the back flicked a lump of something at her. At first she thought it missed, not feeling anything land on her back, but muffled giggling was beginning to come from the back row now. Whatever it was must have landed in her hair. Hermione raised her hand to disentangle whatever it was, her fingers meeting something sticky, slightly damp and soft. Chewing gum again. Tom had been uncharacteristically quiet all lesson, but as she thought the word again he surged forwards into the front of her mind, far enough forward to change her eyes. _"Which one was it?"_ He thought, cold seeping through the words until Hermione half thought her teeth would start to chatter. 

_"I don't know. One of the ones laughing on the back row. Probably Jackson.”_

_"Then we'll focus on him, but if you’re not sure we’d better get all of them in the long run."_ Replied Tom grimly.

Hermione tried her best to emulate his anger, but despite her best efforts a tear rolled down her face. Hunching over so no one would see that she was crying, she fiddled dejectedly with her finished sheet of problems. She couldn’t hand it in now of course, Miss Carter would notice the gum in her hair and then she would have to explain and everyone would think she was a tell-tale as well as a teacher’s pet. Hermione stared down at the questions unseeingly, the numbers blurring beneath a film of tears she was trying desperately to stop from falling.

_"You're better than they are Hermione. You don't need them. They're useless to us, and they're always will be."_ Said Tom with conviction, and Hermione set her jaw, drying her eyes as discretely as she could. Tom was right of course (he always was), they were only muggles, and not even nice ones like her parents. They had spat chewed chewing gum at her. She deserved some revenge.

After a pause during which Hermione fiddled with her pen and Sara put her hand up to say that she had finished, throwing Hermione a smug look that made her blood boil, Tom continued. " _If you could do anything to them, what would it be?"_ Hermione tapped her pen against her lip in thought, trying to really consider her options.

" _I’d want to let them know it was me, so that none of them would ever try anything like this again. I don’t really know what I want to do otherwise. What are you thinking?"_

_"First we should find out their weaknesses, then plan accordingly.”_

Before the summer Hermione might have been inclined to merely scare them, but she trustedTom's judgement too much for that now. _"How do we find out their weaknesses, Legilimency?"_ She asked hopefully.

_"Not unless you want to risk destroying their minds completely."_ Said Tom, completely deadpan. Hermione laughed slightly at the dark joke, attracting a few odd glances as she did so. Someone to her left muttered something about her, tone mocking, but they were too quiet for her to make out the individual words. Hermione did her best to ignore it. 

_"Okay then, but how else do we find out their secrets?"_

_"The muggle way."_ Thought Tom firmly. _"Well, at least partially."_

Before Tom could explain any further, the bell ran for the end of class and there was a disordered scramble for the door. Hermione put her exercise book carefully back into her bag, ignoring her classmates. Slowly the classroom emptied, until she was the only one left in the room, and fortunately for her classmates, Hermione and Tom’s plans for revenge were put on hold by what followed. Her year five teacher was looking at her worriedly, and Hermione smiled tightly at her, refusing to meet her eye. 

“Are you alright Hermione?” She asked. Hermione felt Tom receding, evidently not wanting to chance the muggle seeing the red they both knew would be tinting Hermione's eyes. As soon asHermione thought her eyes would be back to their original brown she looked up, guileless. 

“Can I stay here for break?” She asked quietly instead of answering.

“Don’t you want to go outside and play?” Asked Miss Carter.

“No.” Replied Hermione, trying and failing not to sound sullen.

“You never do, huh?” Hermione shook her head and Miss Carter patted her on the shoulder. “Well I’m sorry dear, I’d like to let you stay but I’ve coffee waiting for me in the staff room and you can’t stay by yourself.” 

“Can’t I stay in here by myself?” Asked Hermione. 

“Sorry, no can do Hermione. It’s the rules I’m afraid.” 

Hermione sighed and summoned up her magic. _You think the rules are silly._ Hermione thought, pushing the intent towards her teacher. _It would be a good idea to let me stay here. I’d be good._ She had pushed the thoughts at Miss Carter with more force than she needed to, and the woman swayed slightly before blinking the fog out of her eyes and nodding as if in agreement. “Why don’t you stay here for a bit. I’ll leave you the keys.” She said, tossing them towards Hermione and leaving, presumably in search of her coffee. Tom radiated amusement from the back of her mind. 

_“That was masterfully done Hermione.”_ He thought, and she didn’t bother to hide her answering smile. Instead she meandered over towards a window. Hermione stared down at the milling children in the playground below and wondered what it would be like if she was one of them. Would she have friends, or would it still just be her and her books, only without Tom? That idea hardly bore thinking about. 

_“Hey look at that.”_ Said Tom, interrupting her oddly introspective moment. Hermione blinked and let Tom direct her gaze towards what he had spotted. It was Jackson, his messy uniform and shock of blond hair distinctive even from this distance. He was standing with a girl who looked just like him. Hermione didn’t understand. 

_“What?”_ She asked. 

_“He cares about that little girl, his sister judging by the features.”_ Replied Tom smugly. Hermione frowned. 

_“What does that have to do with anything?”_

_“It makes her a weakness.”_ Hermione raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. Sensing this, Tom continued. _“I’ll show you later, in the diary.”_

The rest of the day felt like it was creeping past in seconds that lasted a month each, but finally, finally her parent’s put her to bed. She didn’t bother to wait until she knew her parent’s wouldn’t check in on her as she usually did, putting her hand on the diary and following Tom’s mind through the connection. Inside the diary Hermione wasn’t met with their usual cosy room complete with chessboard, bookshelves and comfortable sofa. She was sitting in a long room with a high, shadowed ceiling crisscrossed by heavy wooden beams, Tom on her right hand side looking blank eyed. “Where are we?” She asked, lowering her voice without quite knowing why.

“This is where I grew up. A muggle orphanage.” He said, his voice stiff.

“Why?” she asked.

“For inspiration.” He said cryptically. As she watched, confused, a familiar figure stalked down a set of stairs that had materialised to her left holding a cardboard box in his arms.

“Tom?” She asked, confused by the two versions of her friend. The new Tom ignored her, acting as if she weren't there. 

The Tom who could see tried to smile. It didn’t quite work, his eyes too sad to match the expression he was obviously forcing for her benefit. Hermione glanced between the two of them, cataloguing their differences. A huge, dark bruise coloured new-Tom’s left eye and the surrounding skin, he looked perhaps a year or two younger, and he was wearing an expression that made Hermione oddly uncomfortable. He looked angry, truly angry in a way she’d never seen him. He looked dangerous.“We can’t allow Jackson to continue with his campaign against you. This is a memory of how I dealt with one of my problem muggles.”

The memory-Tom took the lid off the box, a strange smile twisting his face into something barely recognisable, and withdrew the bundle of papers within. Just as he opened the first one, a mocking smile growing on his face, another boy a few years older than him appeared in the doorway. “Riddle.” he spat.

“William.” Replied memory-Tom. “So glad you could make it.”

“What is this? What do you want you little freak?” Hermione stiffened, echoes of the same words said by different muggles in a different time building a lump in her throat that was hard to swallow around.

“What I want? Oh, nothing much. I’m just so very interested in these.” The memory-Tom waved the letter he had opened. “Dearest Billy,” he simpered, affecting a feminine voice, “Know that you are loved, and that your father and I will watch over you from the Lord’s realm. Know that you are our treasure, our—”

“Shut up Riddle. Give my letters here.” Shouted the boy, William Tom had called him, or Billy.

“Are you really in any position to be making demands, dearest darling Billy?” laughed memory-Tom, the ringing sound derisive, cold and oddly high pitched. Hermione shivered, glad Tom was her friend rather than an enemy. He could be really scary when he put the effort in. The taller boy launched himself towards the memory Tom, the Tom who could see her flinching slightly despite himself at the sudden motion. The Tom who could not controlled his reaction better, eyes flashing as they reflected the flames now curling upwards across the paper. Billy let out an anguished shout and Tom snapped his fingers, the fire disappearing.

“Give me those back, I— I’ll do anything.” Billy said, his words running together. Tom smiled.

“You will leave me alone, Billy. Or next time, it won’t be a letter I take.” He said.

The memory faded out, replaced by the room Hermione was used to. 

“That’s how we’ll deal with Jackson.” Said Tom quietly. “By threatening what he cares about.” Hermione blanched, horrified by what Tom was suggesting. 

“What? But his sister didn’t do anything. Wouldn’t it be easier to threaten him?” 

“That wouldn’t work. He’d only respond the way Billy did, violently. A level of removal means we won’t get hurt. Besides,” he added with a sigh, “We wouldn’t have to actually hurt her, only make him believe that we could.” Hermione forced herself to think about what Tom was suggesting a little more objectively at that, and realised that as usual, he was right. She could all too easily remember how much Jackson had been able to hurt her last year, when he’d twisted her arm up behind her back in the playground. If they didn’t want to take that chance, this was the best option. Her mind flitting over the magic that might work, Hermione found herself thinking about the odd book of fairytales Tom had leant her recently when she asked about wizarding literature. 

“Is there a ritual that works like the magic in Babbity Rabbity?” She said suddenly, an idea beginning to form.

“Which bit?” Asked Tom, not following immediately. Hermione grinned, please to have thought of something Tom hadn’t already. It was a rare enough occurrence, especially when it came to magic, and she felt it was good for him from time to time. 

“The spell Babbity does, to make the king feel everything he does to the tree.”

“There is.” 

“We could do it so that whatever pain Jackson causes me his sister would feel.” Said Hermione. Tom began to smile. 

“Hermione, I have said it before and I’ll say it again, you are a brilliant little witch.” 

“So what’s the ritual?” She asked. Tom began to explain with relish. 

Hermione’s tenth birthday passed largely unceremoniously save for a new pile of books to add to her collection and Tom’s offer to finally start teaching her Occlumency, the defensive version of Legilimency. Weeks melted past, and Samhain too was gone in the blink of an eye. Tom had hoped they could get everything ready by then, as it was the most powerful day of the year for the kind of ritual magic they were going to do, but they were still missing Jackson’s hair at that point, which was integral to the functioning of the ritual. One day in late November when Hermione had been hiding out in the classroom during break yet again, Miss Carter interrupted the debate she had been having with Tom over the merits of the Addams Family TV show. 

“Hermione do you have a minute?” Asked Miss Carter. Hermione blinked up at her teacher, confused. 

“Of course Miss, but why?” She asked, hoping it’s wasn’t anything bad. In the back of her mind Tom radiated suspicion, but Hermione did her best to stay positive. Something of Tom's worry must have shown in her expression, because Miss Carter offered her a smile.

“Don’t worry, it’s a good thing. I know we haven't known each other long, but I think that gives me a unique perspective on your learning capabilities. Sometimes people miss something that’s right under their nose because they are too used to seeing it. Everyone knows you’re smart, so they stopped noticing it." Tom grudgingly agreed with this, chipping in with a confirmatory anecdote that distracted Hermione completely.

_"That's what Hogwarts was like when I attended, so used to my getting perfect scores that they barely acknowledged it after third year, to say nothing of the muggles. They wouldn't have admitted I was the most intelligent person for miles around if their lives had depended on it."_

Hermione did her best not to laugh at the indignation in Tom's thoughts out loud, realising as he fell into a silent huff that Miss Carter was still speaking. “—Should be challenged in class Hermione, and I don’t think you ever have been. I’d like to do some tests of your ability.” Hermione began to smile.

“I’d love you to.” Said Hermione with a wide smile. Miss Carter patted her shoulder kindly.

“Wonderful. I think we should do them soon, then have a meeting with your parents to discuss next steps for the new year at some point before Christmas.” Tom perked up at that, noting that Miss Carter seemed to be planning to go to Hermione’s parents only after the tests were done and the results given. 

_“It makes sense of course,”_ He mused, _“Much better to approach your parents once everything is done so there’s no chance of their refusing to allow the tests.”_ Hermione privately thought that Miss Carter had probably assumed she would tell her parents as soon as she got home, but she didn’t bother to send that thought Tom’s way, knowing that in this, his mind was already made up.

Over the following weeks Hermione sat a series of exams, all of which were disappointingly easy and obtained three strands of Jackson’s hair, which was surprisingly difficult. There were two maths questions in the final paper that Tom said were a lot like introductory arithmancy he had studied in third year at Hogwarts, so in the time she had left over at the end of the exam he explained what the maths she had just learnt could be used for in magic. He even took control of her right hand to draw out some spell graphs on the blank paper that had been provided for working out. Hermione only just managed to snag that sheet of paper as the last of her tests was collected, not wanting to have to explain the strange diagrams to her teacher. 

When Hermione’s parents received a summons to her school they assumed it was over the bullying she had told them about long ago, before she had realised that adults were at best largely useless with things like that, and at worst actively harmful. Thus, it was with pleasant surprise and not an insubstantial amount of reproach that they received word about the tests she had been doing. Hermione hurried the conversation onwards as best she could, not wanting to dwell on her reasons for not telling her parents. “Did I do well?” She asked, Tom pointing out rather snidely how obvious she was being about avoiding the topic. Luckily for her, the muggle adults were either far less observant than tom was, or they were willing to let the point go for her sake. 

“Did you do well?” Asked Miss Carter incredulously, “I gave you exam papers for year six and seven and you flew through them the same way you do your book reports in my class. You did more than well.” Hermione smiled brightly. 

Her parents were very proud, though they revealed in the car going home that they were also a bit disappointed that she hadn’t told them about the tests sooner. She brushed it off, pointing out that she had wanted it to be a surprise. Though the final plan would have to go through the head teacher before it was a certainty, Miss Carter wanted her moved up a year so that she could attend secondary school a year early. Hermione didn’t quite know how to feel about this, because on the one hand it might be interesting to go to a muggle secondary school, but on the other she knew that she wouldn’t be there for more than a year anyway because of Hogwarts. Not for the first time Hermione willed time to move faster, but it remained stubbornly constant. Still, at least she had everything they would need for the ritual. 

On Yule night Hermione collected the things she would need for her ritual, taking the diary with her in case she needed advice. Tom hadn’t known how his presence in her mind would affect the ritual so he had returned to the diary completely, and felt a bit off balance without Tom’s running commentary, especially as it would be the most complicated ritual she had ever attempted. She made her way out into the garden as soon as it got dark, made sure her parents were still indoors watching television, and placed the objects she had gathered over the past few months onto the ground. It had taken a lot longer to get the blood than she thought it would, and the hair had been just as difficult to obtain, but she was ready now. 

First Hermione uncorked the test tube (which had been temporarily liberated form the science department in place of a proper potions vial) of Daria’s blood, which they had collected on four separate occasions and poured into the diary to preserve it until they did the ritual. Then she carefully coiled a strand of her own hair into it and re-stoppered the vial, wrapping Jackson’s hair around the neck of the test tube and tying it into a quelhsi knot. Then she put it to one side and began to draw her ritual circle. When it was finished Hermione felt a rush of crackling magic, the chalk lighting up white as she carefully stepped into the larger of the two loops within the main protective circle. Very carefully she put the seven pebbles into place in the smaller one, making sure not to smudge any of her runes as she did so, then reached for the vial. When she placed it down at the cross point of the two loops the lines of her ritual circle abruptly shifted, blood red light spreading outwards from the centre of the ritual to it’s edges. 

* * *

In an office that had not been used in almost ten years, a strange machine began to whistle. The sound might have gone completely unnoticed, had a rather clumsy intern by the name of Nymphadora Tonks not chosen that particular moment to stumble through the doorway, having gotten lost yet again in the Auror’s headquarters. She was only here as a favour to her mother from one of the aurors, and she honestly would have left everything well alone if not for the insistent noise. It sounded, to her mind, very much like an alarm of some kind. She fished a purple piece of paper out from one of her inner robe pockets and smoothed it out. Pulling out a quill, she sent a quick note off to the department that read as follows: 

**Lost again, point me spell doesn’t seem to be working properly. There’s an alarm going off.**

**—Tonks.**

Twenty minutes later the doorway lit up and Mad Eye’s distinctive footsteps were echoing down the corridors towards her. “What is it?” Asked Tonks as soon as he got to the room. His scarred face twisted, an approximation of a frown taking shape on what was left of his features. 

“That, Tonks, is a dark detector which shouldn’t be going off at all. It’s a relic from the war.” 

“What’s it detect?” she asked after double checking that it wasn’t one she should already know from NEWTs. 

“Malignant blood magic.” Her eyes went wide. 

As they were staring at it the blaring alarm died away and Moody swore viciously. “We didn’t get a trace on the signal.”

“Shit.” Said Tonks succinctly. 

“Ministry lackies’ll never believe us you know. You could offer to tell ‘em what you saw under veritaserum and they wouldn’t want to deal with it.” he trailed off, looking bitter. 

“What do we do?” Tonks asked, shaken. Moody eyed the now silent machine with malice. 

“Bugger all, Tonks. Bugger all.” He growled, then, brightening slightly, “Still, ought to let Albus know. He might think of something.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Feelings? Comments feed the muse!!
> 
> Also, a note about the time period this is set in. I'm writing during the HP canon era, but some of the books Hermione reads had not been published in 1988/89 when I'm writing. Sue me. They're mostly books that stuck with me from my childhood that I think fit the narrative. 
> 
> Another note: The chewing gum situation actually happened to me!! I was 11 when it happened, some weird girl I'd never spoken to spat gum into my hair and laughed about it with her nasty little friends. I thought it would be a perfect scene, especially because Hermione's hair is so wild and frizzy.


	7. Mastermind and Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom and Hermione make their own fun and find someone useful.

The year six class was different from the one Hermione was used to only in the faces of the muggles she was surrounded by. The same cruel expressions and muttered taunts carried across the same distances in the classroom, mitigated only slightly by the muggles’ curiosity about her. The same playground offered the same unfortunate combination of at-work mob psychology and disregard for her. A new teacher had come to admire her, true enough, but it made no difference to Hermione’s day to day world. Tom didn’t think that the muggle world had anything else to offer, but Hermione couldn’t bear to consign herself to so grim an outlook. Muggles had achieved great things, science and music and art could attest to that. She just wished she could meet inspiring people, rather than just the other children Even her parent’s friends, on the odd occasion they visited, only ever seemed to ask the same questions. 

January slid into February without major incident, the days drifting past in a series of chess gams and late night magic lessons. She could speak parseltongue almost as well as she could speak french now, and her occlumency wasn’t terrible, though how much of that could be attributed to the magic of Tom’s diary they couldn’t be sure. There was another new kid in the year six class, a polish boy who spoke very little and kept mostly to himself. Hermione kept a wary eye on him, not really understanding why he made her hackles rise but far too sensible to ignore her instincts. There was something _off_ about Bogdan Jadinski, and Hermione didn’t care enough to find out what so long as he kept out of her way. The only good thing she could think about him was that he hadn’t thrown his lot in with any of the people who picked on her. 

By the time February gave way to March, Hermione had settled into her new routine and all but forgotten the ritual she had performed at Yule, so when Jackson had cornered her behind the bike sheds one day she felt the usual lurch of fear. Then Tom began to laugh inside her head. It was the high, cold kind of laugh he reserved for people like Billy, the boy who had tormented him all those years ago at the orphanage, or Jackson, who tormented her at school in the present. Hermione’s fear melted away, replaced by a kind of thrill she didn’t want to examine too closely. “Jackson.” She said, making sure to keep her tone blasé. 

“Freak.” He responded, his voice mirroring hers in tone. 

“Don’t call me that.” She said, still calm. Jackson laughed. 

“What are you going to do about it freak?” Hermione pulled Tom forwards so that her eyes flashed a brilliant red. They hadn't discussed it, but as intimidation tactics went she couldn’t think of anything much more effective. She’d seen the little gold cross he wore. She knew what red eyes would mean to a stupid child like him. True to expectation, he reared back. Tom laughed again, and this time Hermione’s vocal chords responded. He was controlling their body at the moment after all. In that moment her laughter sounded like his did, and Hermione watched gleefully as the sound echoed through the playground, drawing stares. _“We’ve got him now. He’s all yours Hermione. Have fun.”_ Thought Tom, relinquishing control. Then, nastily, _“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”_

Hermione grinned, pleased by how Jackson shifted on his feet at her expression. At this rate she wouldn’t even have to explain. “Nothing.” Said Hermione lightly, waiting patiently for understanding to dawn in Jackson’s eyes. It took longer than she thought it would, but eventually he must have remembered what he had asked. He sneered. 

“Then I don’t think I will.” 

“You’re not going to hit me again either.” She said, still as pleasant as she could force herself to be to the monster in front of her. It was very basic reverse psychology, but Hermione wasn’t exactly manipulating a grandmaster here. Jackson was just a stupid little muggle. He slapped her. Her head snapped to one side, but hurt failed to bloom where his strike had landed and bruises too failed to follow in its wake. “You can’t hurt me anymore Jackson, no one can.” 

“Huh?” He asked, and Hermione smiled coldly. It was one of Tom’s smiles, carefully practiced in the mirror until she could recreate the dark promise he was so good at. 

“Ask your sister.” His hands balled into fists, and Hermione continued to smile. His punch hit her squarely across the bridge of the nose, and Hermione had the distinct displeasure of feeling bone break painlessly, slip out of place and then reform as if nothing had happened. She surpassed a slight feeling of guilt, hoping that Jackson’s sister Daria hadn’t been too pretty to start with. Hermione smiled. 

“You run along to the nurse’s office Jackie,” she taunted. “You’ll see what I did.” 

“What’s wrong with you?” Said Jackson, now scared, though he was trying not to show it. “What are you?”

“Me?” Asked Hermione, suppressing the urge to laugh again, “I’m someone you shouldn’t have messed with. Some _thing_ you couldn’t possibly understand.” Tom surged forward, taking his cue. Hermione’s eyes flashed bright, bloody red. “Leave me alone. Keep the others away from me.” said Tom, his echoing words chilling in Hermione’s voice, “Or next time I’ll go for the throat.” Jackson turned and fled. Tom brushed dirt off Hermione’s skirt, Hermione snorting from her vantage point in the back of their shared mind as Tom revelled in the dramatics of their moment. After that no one bothered her. She had actually seen Jackson throwing a few punches on her behalf, a futile attempt to protect his baby sister from the people he had led in his campaign against Hermione. He didn’t know that it was only his violence that would effect little Daria. How could he, silly muggle that he was? Hermione certainly wasn’t going to tell him. 

Hermione was no longer bothered by playground violence or even teasing most of the time, a strange reluctance having taken hold of her classmates (both previous and present) after what happened with Jackson. He had evidently been telling the other children _something_ , though neither her nor Tom was sure what. Tom thought he couldn’t be telling them what had really happened, one account of no priests appearing to exorcize her demons, but Hermione disagreed. Not many people at her school were very religious, so she didn’t think many people believed him. She theorised that people were avoiding her simply because they could tell she’d done something bad to Jackson, but he wouldn’t tell them the truth about what. It was simple fear of the unknown, to her mind, but whatever he had been saying it was enough to keep the muggles away, and for that she was grateful. She hadn’t really realised how much energy she had wasted on a daily basis worrying about what horrible thing they would do next until the threat was eliminated. 

The dust settled and the school grew accustomed to Hermione’s new protected status, everyone doing their best to ignore her completely until one day in late April. Hermione looked up from her latest psychology book (Tom’s latest fixation) wary, as a shadow fell across the page. It was Bogdan. “You did something bad to Jackson.” He said bluntly, looking at the ground in front of him. “He says—” He cut himself off, then met her eye squarely. “He says you have demons in you, that your eyes go red. This is a bad kind of magics if it is true.” 

“You’d better stay away then, hadn’t you?” Asked Hermione dryly, unbothered. Bogdan blinked, then shook his head. 

“I think it might be— He paused, said something in Polish and frowned. “I don’t have the words in english. I don’t know it well enough. The mother of my father, she is different from normal people. She _knows_ things. I think she could take them away.” 

“Maybe I made friends with my demon.” She said evenly, her eyes flashing red as Tom surged forwards, ever one for creating drama. _“Your demon? Hermione I’m flattered.”_ Hermione rolled her eyes internally at Tom’s words. Bogdan took two steps back, stumbling over himself as he did so. Hermione laughed, but Tom wasn’t paying attention. He seemed to be examining Bogdan with undue amounts of interest. Then, before she had time to ask him what exactly was so fascinating about the muggle boy, he explained. _“Did you know he has magic?”_

The sentence stopped her in her tracks. _“It’s not strong, he’s barely more than a squib, but it’s definitely there.”_ Continued Tom, but Hermione wasn’t fully listening. Hope had risen in Hermione’s chest, a sudden, vicious resurgence of the desire for a friend. It turned to ashes just as quickly when he flinched away from her outstretched hand. She swallowed, wishing fervently that she hadn’t scared him the way she had. It was too late though, and just like the others he ran. Tom was still at the front of her mind, his curiosity giving way to something much less kind as he locked her gaze onto Bogdan’s retreating form. Hermione’s body stalked after him, book forgotten on the bench where she’d been sitting as Tom gave chase. 

_“Tom?”_ Hermione asked, vaguely worried, _“What are we doing?”_

_“Tying up loose ends.”_ Said Tom grimly, _“He knows about us now Hermione. He knows your eyes can turn red and that you’re sharing your body with someone else, even if he doesn’t know who. He’ll tell someone about this when he gets to Hogwarts if he gets the chance and then there’ll be questions and spells and then they’ll find out about the diary and everything we have will fall apart. We can’t let that happen.”_ Tom’s voice had started out the same way it did whenever he posed one of his logic puzzles for her in the evenings, but by the end of his speech a distinct, raw note of panic had crept into his tone. Hermione felt his emotions viscerally, her heartbeat picking up in a fight or flight response to panic that was not her own. 

_“What are we going to do?”_ She thought quietly as they stormed across the playground after Bogdan. 

_“We’re going to steal his magic.”_ Said Tom, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say, as if he had been talking about nothing less worrying than the seven bridges arithmancy problem. 

_“What?”_ If Hermione had been speaking out loud the question might have come out as a screech. As she wasn’t it was merely a particularly spiky thought, but she thought it got her point across well enough. She wasn’t sure if she was more curious or horrified. Tom seemed to take her question as simple curiosity, and began to explain. 

_“There is a spell that would do it easily, but we would need a wand. It’s a very powerful curse, one that isn’t really used in polite magical society, but it would be gloriously effective.”_ Tom sounded wistful, which Hermione honestly didn’t quite know if she wanted to understand, but it was besides the point. 

_“Well we don’t have a wand.”_ Pointed out Hermione, _“And besides, couldn’t we just swear him to secrecy?”_

_“No.”_ Thought Tom, sounding honestly regretful, _“All of the secrecy charms I know need a wand too, but I think I’ve come up with a way to steal his magic without one.”_ Hermione frowned. She didn’t like the idea of stealing anyone’s magic, but they couldn’t let Bogdan go to Hogwarts knowing what he did. Not if doing that meant people would try to take Tom away from her. He was her best friend, her only friend, and she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. Though he had hardly admitted it, Hermione knew Tom was scared. He had told her everything they had would fall apart, his voice wavering with fear, and she wouldn’t let anything make him sound like that again. 

_“What are we going to do?”_ She said, her thought weighed down with the determination she had put behind it. Tom radiated warmth towards her in what felt sort of like a telepathic hug, and Hermione smiled. 

_“We’re going to give him the diary.”_

Distantly they heard the bell ending lunch begin to ring, but Hermione ignored it completely, her mind elsewhere. Much as she understood, logically at least, that Tom spent more time inside her head than between the covers of the diary he had spent fifty years in, the thought of parting with it made something deep within her twist uncomfortably. _“Do we have to?”_ She asked, willing Tom to say no. _“He said his grandmother was special, like us. What would happen if she found it?”_

_“She couldn’t destroy it. The diary is well protected.”_ Replied Tom instantly, but a flash of fear she didn’t understand followed his words, prompting him to speak again. _“Still, I think you’re right to be cautious Hermione.”_ There was a long pause, Hermione’s body slowing to a stop as Tom mulled the problem over. _“If only I still had my magical core this would all be so much easier.”_ He thought absently. 

Hermione did a double take. She knew that Tom had been a wizard before he was a book, and had lost the ability to cast spells when he became one, but until now it had never occurred to her that his magical core was simply gone. Not for the first time, Hermione wondered how exactly he had become a book in the first place, but it was hardly the time to ask now. Then she remembered something else and grew even more puzzled. He’d called out to her with magic from that bookshop hadn’t he? What had changed? Hermione decided to ask. _“How did you call out for me then, when we met?”_ She asked. 

_“I was hidden by strong protective wards. I reformed the magic that made them up and used it to call out for help.”_ Hermione blinked. She’d had no idea that was even possible. 

_“So can you use magic from any source?”_ She asked. 

_“Yes.”_ Replied Tom. At that Hermione frowned, wondering why he hadn’t reached the same obvious conclusion she had. It probably wouldn’t work, but then Tom hadn’t realised sharing minds was possible either. She would suggest it anyway, she decided. What harm could it do? 

_“What about sharing mine?”_

Tom paused, silent for an almost worrying amount of time. Hermione could feel the edges of whatever emotion he was trying to control, but not define its shape, and before she could Tom spoke again. His voice was oddly flat. _“That would work.”_ Then, sounding much more like he usually did, _“Remind me, would you, never to underestimate your generosity or intelligence?”_ If Hermione had been at the forefront of her mind she would have blushed profusely, but Tom was, so she didn’t. 

_“You have a perfect memory Tom,”_ She said by way of a reply, _“You won’t forget.”_ Tom rolled Hermione’s eyes. 

_“Right you are yet again.”_ He replied with a laugh. Before either of them could say anything else however, they reached Bogdan. 

The boy froze, Hermione watching impassively as Tom raised her hand out towards him. “Imperio.” Said Tom, Hermione’s voice quiet but commanding. It was a proper spell, not just intention that Tom was using now, the first proper spell he’d done in fifty years, and she could feel his glee. A laugh echoed around Hermione’s head, and she didn’t know if it were her or Tom’s. Her hand reached into her shoulder bag and withdrew the diary, tossing it towards the boy. He caught it and returned to staring at her expectantly. A strange rot-sweet flavour coated her tongue, sparks of crackling energy rushing through her bloodstream as Tom spoke again. “Write in the diary Bogdan. Write until your magic is mine.” Hermione could barely make out the words her mouth had formed over the pounding of her heart. Mechanically Bogdan opened the diary and began to write, in english at first and then polish, faster and faster until his biro ran out. He pulled out another without his expression changing and continued, Hermione standing guard over the odd scene. 

By the time the last school bell of the day rang they were finished, Bogdan slumped over and the diary safely back where it belonged in Hermione’s bag. _“He’ll be ok after this, right?”_ She asked anxiously. 

_“He’ll be a muggle.”_ Replied Tom, distaste clear in his tone. Hermione felt a sliver of guilt worm its way into her mind. She ruthlessly squashed it with the memory of Tom’s sharp, momentary fear. She had done the right thing. They were safe. No one was going to try and take Tom away from her now. 

April quickly turned into May and then July with astounding rapidity. Exams were upon them and then over in the blink of an eye, and before Hermione had really known it she was walking out of the gates of her primary school for the last time. She would miss the librarian, and maybe Miss Carter, but leaving the rest of it behind took a great weight off her shoulders. The summer holidays stretched out before her endlessly. As high summer (or Alban Hefin if she were giving the celebration it’s proper name) approached however, Tom became oddly secretive. He spent less time with her, doing something he refused to explain inside the diary more often than not. Hermione had got used to sleeping almost every night, and it felt awfully like she was being left out of something. It was a feeling that reminded her far too much of her few, disastrous attempts to befriend muggle children. It was a feeling she had never expected Tom to cause. He of all people knew what it was like. 

Her parents could tell she was upset about something, especially during their two week holiday from working at the dental practice, but they attributed it to nerves about “Big school”, not that Hermione would ever have called it anything so juvenile. She didn’t know when it had happened, but somewhere during the last two years Hermione had become a stranger to her parents. They had no idea who she really was. It was a chilling thought, how little they knew about her, and a sad one. With Tom secluding himself within the diary more often than not, she had plenty of time to think about it too, which only seemed to make everything worse. She had even tried to talk to them about some of it, the little she could explain without telling them about magic, but it was no use. They just didn't understand. Tom’s absence seemed like a cruel, karmic twist of fate, especially given what Hermione had done to stop Tom from being discovered. Hermione had never felt so alone, and she hated it. 

Then, as the sun set on midsummer’s eve, Tom pulled her into the diary without warning. When Hermione could see once more she discovered that she was standing in the huge, arching entranceway to a castle. It lay beyond what was clearly supposed to be a grassy verge behind high metal gates set into a wall almost a meter thick, the greenery faded as if the world were a watercolour painting.The metal was twisted into the likeness of four creatures surrounding a calligraphic letter H. What was obviously a lion, a snake, what she thought was a badger and some kind of hunting bird. An eagle of some kind, Hermione guessed. It was Hogwarts. It had to be. Tom appeared beside her, radiating warmth and affection she hadn’t known how much she missed. “Tom!” She yelled, flying into his surprised arms. 

“Hermione?” He asked. 

“Where were you? You’ve barely been out of the diary since school.” She said, her voice clotted with something far too watery to be anger. She didn’t want to cry, yet here she was. Tom hugged her tighter. 

“I’m sorry Hermione. I was experimenting with how much I could do in here, with the magic we took from that child, Bogdan?” He seemed unsure about the name, which Hermione envied. She couldn’t seem to forget it, or what they’d done to it’s owner. She nodded. “I wanted to surprise you with a gift.” Tom continued, stepping back and making fierce, steady eye contact. “Almost a year ago you gave me a truly remarkable gift, one not many people would offer. I only thought it fair to return the favour.” 

Hermione dried her eyes and smiled. “Well don’t do it again,” She said as brusquely as she could, trying in vain to stop her eyes filling with tears once more. “I was so lonely.” 

“I’ll let you know next time.” Said Tom softly. “I should have known how much it would affect you, my being gone a bit more.” Hermione frowned, not wanting Tom to feel bad about an honest mistake. 

“It’s alright, don’t worry. What have you been up to? Can I see the gift?” She said, her words running together in her excitement. Tom grinned, spinning on his heel to gesture at the gated castle grounds behind him. 

“This is your gift Hermione. I wanted to do something special, something magical. I thought you might like it as much as I did. Do, really.” His voice had gone soft, fond in the way it so rarely was. “This is Hogwarts as I remember it. All of Hogwarts.” 

Hermione’s eyes went wide. She knew now, how much effort he must have put into creating this replica, even with the magic they had stolen at his disposal. He clicked his fingers and the gates swung open before he spoke again. “Would you care for a tour?” Hermione giggled and took his proffered arm, feeling like she was in a fairytale. The sun felt faintly warm against her face, something usually absent from Tom’s world in the diary which she attributed to the new magic he had access to, and the ground felt almost too solid beneath her feet.

“Thank you.” said Hermione as they reached the enormous castle doors, a smile growing on her face as she realised all over again what this meant to Tom. He had the only family he’d ever known back, and it was all thanks to her. “Thank you for showing me all of this. Thank you for doing it.” Tom opened the doors wordlessly, an elated smile on his face. Their footsteps echoed through the castle and Hermione looked up at the arching grooves of the corridors in awe.“It’s so beautiful.” She said as they walked across a raised bridge of some kind, and Tom smiled widely. 

“You know I’ve always thought of this castle as home.” replied Tom quietly, something between awe and affection clear in his voice. “I’m glad you like it.” His words were inadequate, but they were the only ones that fit. Hermione slipped her hand into Tom’s and together they made their way through the twisting, empty, shifting corridors of Hogwarts Castle, no less beautiful in the washed out livery of Tom’s memories than he had described it being the first time she asked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More coming soon because I'm on something of a roll at the moment, which I hope will be fun and fresh. I have big plans (Evil laughter ensues) Comments feed the muse so give me your thoughts!! I promise not to steal your soul just because you're writing to me...


	8. Disagreements.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Hermione and Tom find the opposite of common ground.

Albus Dumbledore did not, he thought with a laugh, like riddles. He did not particularly like Riddles either, the one that he knew, but hopefully his current issue with the former had nothing to do with the latter. A student that was slated to join Hogwarts in the coming September had disappeared from the book of names. Bogdan Jadinski was a polish half-blood and a recent immigrant to Britian with one squib parent and a magical paternal grandmother. It was obvious he could not attend Durmstrang of all places, so the family had moved to within the borders of the United Kingdom. They certainly wouldn’t be the first. They would, however, be the first on a much more sinister list. Bogdan Jadinski’s name had vanished from the register. If he had died his name would have been struck through, and his death date provided. If he had moved to, say, America, it would have been noted down. Hogwarts knew things like that. Neither had occurred. It looked for all the world as if he had simply stopped being a wizard, but that wasn’t possible. Hence, the riddle. 

It was not the only concerning report to make its way into his gilded office. Mad-eye down at the Auror department had sent him worrying news about some ill-intended blood magic, visible for the span of barely half an hour. Severus reported that his dark mark had flared at Yule. Harry Potter was reportedly very quiet, unfailingly polite and being mistreated by his muggle family, which reminded Albus far too much of another boy he had failed. Still, a bad upbringing did not make a bad wizard, or indeed did a good one make a good wizard. After all, Bathilda had been great aunt to— no. He would not think of _him_ now. Even if he had sent word of a worrying dream Albus' way the month prior. Things were darkening, the clouds of the next war drawing in, and Albus didn’t like it one bit. He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes, the tang of a sherbert lemon fading as he began to bring up and throw away plans to counteract whatever was happening under his very nose. These were warning signs. Something was coming, and for once, he had no idea what. It made him uneasy. Not knowing every player on the board had never suited him. He wore uncertainty like an ill-fitting and drab suit of dress robes, that was to say, not often and uncomfortably when he did. He had a plan, a plan that rogue blood mages in London and disappearing wizarding children had no part in, and there was no room here for failure.

* * *

After midsummer Tom returned to spending most of his time in the back of Hermione’s mind convincing her that going to Diagon Alley would be a terrible idea. Hermione could think of nothing she would like to do more than explore a magical shopping district, but Tom refused to tell her where it was. He apparently didn’t want anyone working at the entrance point to the magical world to recognise them when they were taken by a member of the Hogwarts staff. Hermione thought that Tom was being unduly paranoid, but in the end she acquiesced. There was plenty to do in muggle London after all, and it had the added benefit of teaching Tom more about the muggle world. 

They spent an interesting day at the natural history museum, taking the opportunity to _convince_ one of the caretakers that they should be allowed to explore the staff only areas of the museum. Hermione had been a bit bored in the geology section initially, but Tom had chosen that moment to begin a lecture on how the different types of stone and crystal could affect ritual magic. After that her mother had had to prize her out to go and look at the dinosaur fossils, which she thought it would be interesting to compare to dragon bones. Tom actually didn’t know very much about dragons which was, Hermione thought, a huge oversight on his part. How anyone who had been introduced to the magical world as an eleven year old could _not_ do as much research as possible into dragons was a mystery to her. Either way, it would have to wait. 

The summer holidays flew past in a whirlwind of buying new school uniform for Hermione’s new school which she did not enjoy, and new course books, which she normally would have enjoyed. A flick through all of them revealed, unfortunately, exactly what Tom had expected. The textbooks were not exactly complicated. Before they could quite decide how they felt about that, having finished the last one, the school year was upon them. 

Hermione’s first day was a bewildering one. The school was much larger than her primary school, and unlike last year each class was in a different room with a different teacher. Between each lesson the corridors were filled with shouting, swearing people a foot taller than her that seemed completely unaware of her presence, forcing their way past each other with what Hermione thought was a truly excessive use of elbowing and shoving. If Tom hadn’t been there to keep it together, Hermione would definitely have cried. Luckily he was, so they made it to all but one of her lessons on time and bruise free. 

The following day Hermione had much more room to breathe, all thanks to the small stone in the inside pocket of her blazer which was carved with a ward. She had practiced the runes for hours the night before, for once ignoring the pile of homework and reading she had already been set in favour of completing her first ward. Tom had been the one to suggest a muggle repelling ward, which Hermione took issue with on basis of principle, but appreciated in practice. It didn’t require much power to maintain, as she didn’t really want much more than a foot of personal space, and it worked perfectly. If she wanted to, Tom assured her, she could blast the muggles meters backwards, but she was perfectly happy to keep them slightly closer than that. It wasn’t going to be like primary school. She was determined to see to that. 

A week after she had started, Hermione found the library. To her surprise and Tom’s consternation, it wasn’t empty. Hermione had no sooner picked an empty table to start her homework at than a boy and two girls much older than her sat down at it’s other there chairs. Hermione almost put more power into the ward stone then, if only to get enough quiet to read, but before she could one of the girls was looking directly at her. “Man, were we ever that small?” She murmured. Hermione didn’t know if he should respond, but before she could the other two were laughing. Tom came forward a little, anger pulsing from the back of her mind, and Hermione eyes narrowed in a glare. 

“Ooh,” said the other girl, “That’s a glare alright. We didn’t mean it like that kid, sorry.” 

Hermione’s eyes went wide. A muggle was apologising to her. A muggle child was apologising to her. Well alright perhaps not quite a child, the three of them towered over Hermione at least, but still. No one at primary school had ever apologised to her at the very least. Tom was still angry, possibly at being referred to as kid, but Hermione was beginning to smile. “It’s ok.” she said, then, hoping it wouldn't come across as boastful, added an explanation. “You probably weren't this small anyway. I’m doing secondary school a year early.” The three teenagers shared a glance. 

“So you’re proper bright then? Cool.” Said the boy, “We’re year eleven now. My name’s Steve,” 

“Daniella,” Added the girl to his left. “The other one’s Sky.” 

“The other one?” shrieked apparently-Sky, “I’ll give you the other one.” Hermione giggled, suddenly realising how quiet Tom was being. _“Tom?”_ She thought, but there was no answer. He must have gone down into the diary, though she couldn’t think why. 

She spent a happy forty minutes with the three older students, swapping stories and interests. They were studying Macbeth in english, which Hermione was very jealous of, and she was not, which Steve and Sky were jealous of. Daniella liked Shakespeare, which immediately endeared her to Hermione, but the teasing of the other two only made her laugh. Hermione didn’t really understand why she didn’t mind, they were laughing at her, but she could see how much affection there was between the three of them. It was odd. Hermione decided that whenever Tom reappeared, she would ask him. 

_“Why bother Hermione?”_ Tom’s question rattled Hermione. _“They’re only muggles. After next year you won’t have to see any of them again. There’s no point making friends at the muggle secondary school.”_

_“I liked them. They were funny, and quite smart. Sky did her maths GCSE two years early, and Daniella likes Shakespeare.”_ Said Hermione, wondering why Tom was so against her having muggle friends. 

_“We’re different from muggles. Better.”_ He snapped. Hermione gasped, shocked despite herself. She knew on some level that Tom didn’t like many muggles, probably because of how they were raised, but she hadn’t realised that extended to even nice ones. 

_“That’s an awful thing to think Tom.”_ She thought at him reproachfully, _“Maybe we’re special because we have magic, and maybe we’re smarter than average, but I think it would be fun to have friends for once. You don’t have to like it, you can sulk in the diary during my school days if you want, but I’m going to spend break with them tomorrow. I think they’re cool.”_ Abruptly Hermione felt Tom flicker out, heading down into the diary presumably to sulk as she had suggested, and set her jaw. She loved Tom, but she was tired of being lonely. She could have more than one friend. 

Her righteous fury lasted for hours, but as she went to bed when the real reason Tom was acting that awful way earlier became startlingly clear. It wasn’t about Sky and the others being muggle. That didn’t make any sense, and Tom wasn’t stupid or prejudiced enough to really believe what he’d said earlier. It was because Hermione liked them, and Tom was jealous. Hermione having other friends must have brought up all kinds of insecurities for him, and then she’d gone and told him she would prefer to spend time with them than him tomorrow. Hermione could have kicked herself. Of all things to say when he was already upset, what she had chosen might be the worst possible response. He had needed reassurances that he would still come first, and instead she had told him he could go back to his miserable, eternal silence in the diary while she spent time with her new muggles. It was awful when she thought about it that way. Her eyes filled with tears and she instantly attempted to use their link to reach the diary. When she reached the back of her mind there was nothing, no evidence that Tom had ever been there. He had shut her out of the diary. Tears slid down her cheeks, but Hermione was determined now to apologise, to explain that of course Tom was still her best friend, still much more important than any of the muggles she’d only known for half a day. 

She wrenched open the diary, ignoring the strange resistance she felt and uncapping her fountain pen. _‘Tom, we need to talk. Let me in.’_ The words sank into the paper as always, but the page remained stubbornly blank. Hermione scowled. This was childish, and it was beneath both of them. _‘You listen to me Tom Marvolo Riddle,’_ She wrote, determined now to have this conversation or die trying. _‘You’re the best person I know. You’ve changed my life. I’m sorry I hurt you. I don’t like the muggles I met today more than I like you, however it might have seemed earlier. I didn’t mean to make you feel replaceable or anything. It was just nice to meet people who didn’t hate me, or think I was evil. You’re always going to be more important to me than they are. You’re my best friend and you always will be.’_

The spine of the diary began to glow and something in Hermione’s mind wrenched open, white hot pain echoing through her body. Her limbs twitched of their own accord, her magic bubbling up to shatter the glass of her bedroom window as it sought an enemy it could not find. Hermione bit back a scream and tasted blood, then she was gone, sucked down into the diary as tears streamed down her face. Arms closed around her, a hand combing gently through her hair as she shook. “It’s alright Hermione,” Said Tom in a soothing whisper as the pain began to abate, “It’s alright.” 

“What was that?” She managed through choked sobs. 

“I made a mistake.” He said into her hair. “I was so angry earlier. I shouldn’t have done it, but I just felt like I was nothing to you. I sealed off the bond with occlumency. It was a waste of magic.” Something wet dripped onto her forehead and Hermione realised that Tom was crying. _Tom was crying._ “I ruined everything.” He managed, his voice wracked with guilt. “I’m so sorry Hermione” 

Hermione carefully placed her arms around Tom, anger forgotten in the face of his grief and guilt. “It’s alright.” She said, echoing his own assertions of the moment before. “You didn’t know it would hurt like that to undo whatever you did. You didn’t ruin anything.” 

“Look around.” Hermione lifted her head from where it had been buried on Tom’s thin shoulder and pulled a sharp breath in. The vision of Hogwarts that Tom had put so much love into creating lay in ruins, the magic he had used to form it swirling around them in a roaring torrent of grey against sky that looked more parchment-like than ever. 

“I’m sorry Tom. I shouldn't have said all that stuff earlier, I didn’t think. I know you didn’t mean it about the muggles.” 

“You were right, about how you made me feel, but I’m sorry I said what I did. I don’t want to lose you, you’re my only friend. The only person I ever cared for. Besides, I’ve never met a kind muggle in my life. I find myself jealous that you have.”Hermione smiled sadly. 

“Friends?” She asked in a small voice. 

“Friends.” Confirmed Tom, now much more relaxed. “The very best.”

* * *

Behind the carefully constructed mask he had put on to teach Hermione the theory behind the animate-inanimate transfiguration process after their making up, Tom seethed. To think, Hermione had assumed he was jealous of a pack of filthy muggles. He, who would one day become the greatest sorcerer the world had ever seen. He, who had created a horcrux at merely sixteen. It boiled in his blood, but he could do nothing about it. Hermione had forgiven him, had trapped him into her perception of events, and it rankled far more than he expected. Even after the pain curse he had done with Bogdan's magic, Hermione's easy assumptions didn't sit right with him. It was wrong, and it was beneath him. She had no idea what she was talking about. 

When Hermione drifted at long last back out of the diary he reconstructed the 'ruins' of Hogwarts with a thought and reminded himself firmly that Hermione was going to be worth it. She was worth the facade, the faux-tears, the investment of his time, because she was just like him. Smarter, better, more magically capable than the rest. The only other real person in his world, and his only link to the world outside the diary. He could afford to be patient while she grew out of these fits of empathy. He could wait. After all, he had all the time in the world. He was immortal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOAH, a lot happened there. I didn't even know what was happening, and then BAM!! Things!! Occurred!! What did you think? Comments feed the muse, so don't be shy. 
> 
> A side note (and shameless self-advertising) I love writing about Albus Dumbledore and you should totally go read my Gellert Grindelwald origin story!


	9. The wizarding world at last.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wands, robes and professors (oh my!)

At a quarter to six on the evening of her eleventh birthday, Hermione opened the door to see a stranger and felt her mind begin to fizz with excitement. The woman was tall, her greying hair scraped back into a viciously tight bun at the base of her neck and her eyes warm, if reserved behind their wire framed glasses. Tom sparked excitedly in the back of her mind, but Hermione would have known she was a witch even if he hadn’t. It was fairly obvious how uncomfortable the woman was with her surroundings, to say nothing of the clothes she was wearing to blend in. There was something about her appearance that just screamed magic. “How do you do ma’am?” Asked Hermione, unable to contain a smile.

“Very well thank you. Are you a Miss Hermione Granger?” Hermione nodded. “Excellent, then I must ask you if I can come in.”

“What’s your name Ma’am?” Asked Hermione, forgetting to pretend she was nervous about being recognised by a stranger. Tom winced but it couldn’t be helped now.

“Professor Minerva McGonagall, of Hogwarts School.”

Tom crept forwards in her mind as far as he could get before Hermione’s eyes would start to change colour, fascinated. _“Minnie McGonagall. This is beyond strange. I was two years below her in Hogwarts. She was quidditch captain for Gryffindor, head girl and easily the best chess player in the school, well, the best until I came along of course.”_

_“Modest as always.”_ Thought Hermione dryly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you professor," she said out loud, opening the living room door and ushering her guest in. Her parents looked up, confused and slightly alarmed, but Hermione was quick to assuage their fears. “Mum, Dad, this is Professor McGonagall of Hogwarts school.” 

"Are you here to talk about a scholarship place?" Asked her mother, beaming at Hermione. 

"Of sorts.” Said The professor with a wry smile, then, turning to Hermione, asked the obvious next question. “Are you accustomed to receiving scholarship offers Miss Granger?" 

"Yes," said Hermione, hoping she didn't sound too boastful. "I've already moved up a year in school because of my academic ability. I'm currently in my first year of secondary school." 

"I'm sure we can expect great things from you Miss Granger." Said the professor warmly. Her parents were quick to usher Professor McGonagall into one of the three chairs at the table, hospitable as ever in the face of a potential teacher of Hermione’s. 

The professor settled herself in the seat nearest the window and Hermione sat down opposite her, her parents still seated on the sofa as they had been when Hermione had first brought the other witch into the room. Tom seemed pleased by this, and Hermione caught something about _“Invisible lines”_ but before she could ask what he meant Tom had pulled her attention back to the outside world. While she had been puzzling out Tom’s stray thought, or failing to, Professor McGonagall had been noticing one of the half played games Hermione and Tom had abandoned. Tom waited expectantly and Hermione pretended not to be watching her new teacher like a hawk.

Eventually, when Professor McGonagall had been studying the board for perhaps two minutes, Hermione spoke again. “Do you play?” She asked innocently, Tom’s laughter ringing in her head.

“I do indeed Miss Granger. Is this game one of yours?” Hermione nodded. “Which side are you playing?” the professor continued, obviously impressed.

“Both.” Said Hermione easily. “Mum and Dad don’t play much.”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Hermione’s father rather more frostily than she thought the situation called for, “But why are you here? It’s Hermione’s birthday and I’m afraid we have plans.” 

If there were plans, it was the first Hermione had heard of them. She had been too caught up in her lessons with Tom to take much notice of what was going on at home. The Professor seemed all too aware that the atmosphere had grown less pleasant, but did nothing more than purse her lips reprovingly. Hermione was compelled to break the tension. “It’s alright Dad, you know how scheduling issues are with these fancy schools. Professor McGonagall is probably a very busy—” Hermione had been about to say the word ‘witch’ but her tongue had stilled, Tom taking the tiny sliver of physical control he needed to avert disaster. “Woman.” Hermione heard herself say, smoothing over the awkward pause with a charming smile she knew full well Tom had spent years perfecting. It was his ‘perfect student’ smile, and she’d had plenty of practice using it on the muggles. The professor in question looked at Hermione a little oddly, but Hermione sensed no suspicion in her eyes and Tom seemed to think the danger was over, so she let herself relax a little. 

“I am, as you know, a representative of Hogwarts school. It is located in Scotland, and only offers full time boarding places. It is a school for the gifted.” 

“Oh,” said Her mother softly, and Hermione all but felt Tom roll his eyes. “But what about—”

_“She hardly sees us anyway. All this fuss over half an hour every night.”_ Tom thought derisively. Hermione wanted to defend her parents, but to be honest Tom’s point was a good one. The only reason they were home this early at all was because it was her birthday. 

“—Witchcraft?” Her father’s incredulous scorn broke through Hermione’s thoughts and she winced. The professor straightened her coat and put on a severe expression, but Tom’s attention (and subsequently Hermione’s) was on her father’s face. Tom was shifting, puling Bogdan’s magic closer to the surface, and it dawned on Hermione that he was preparing to be attacked. As gently as she could she pushed a sense of warmth towards him, hoping she had successfully replicated the telepathic hugs Tom sometimes offered her. 

“Indeed Mr Granger. Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Said Professor McGonagall. She said it with such assured finality that Hermione would have stoped any kind of argument there, no matter how much she thought she knew about the topic, but her father was evidently made of sterner stuff than she was at the moment because he blazed on regardless. Then the strict professor morphed into a cat and back before their very eyes. After that neither of her parents could do much to argue against the existence of magic. _“Did you know she could do that? Could you do that before you lost your body? That was advanced transfiguration wasn't it?”_ Thought Hermione in a rush. 

_“I did not, but it doesn't surprise me. Minnie always was a transfiguration prodigy, even I only tied her test scores. That, Hermione, is the Animagus Transformation in the flesh. I don’t have an animal form, not everyone does. Something to do with magical potentials, I never looked much into it after I found out I couldn’t do it. Knowing you, you’d probably enjoy the arithmancy of it just as an academic exercise.”_ Hermione couldn’t help but agree, fascinated. 

“Wow Professor, that was brilliant. Can I learn?” asked Hermione. 

“If you are very talented at transfiguration, then perhaps you could. I teach a course on it for select seventh years, though it’s been almost eight years since we had anyone want to try. It is called the animagus transformation.” 

“But hang on,” said her mother with a frown. “Our Hermione’s no witch. She’s just a normal girl, spectacularly bright to be sure, but not magical.” 

“Really?” Asked Professor McGonagall, concerned. “No accidental magic? Nothing you couldn’t explain?” Her Father shook his head resolutely but to her surprise her mother was eyeing her thoughtfully. 

“There were a few times, when you were very small, when I thought you might be gifted like that.” She said to Hermione, a far away look in her eyes, “I never mentioned them to anyone because, well it seemed so ridiculous. You never cried much as a child, just sat there with your watchful eyes. I thought I saw your favourite blanket floating up into your cradle once when it had fallen, and you were always getting into places you had no way of getting into.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hermione and her father spoke at the same time. 

“Would you have believed me, if I told you?” Asked her mother helplessly. Hermione frowned. Of course she would have, her mother knew how much she loved fantasy novels. 

“I might have done.” said her father with a luminous grin, “You know how much I love my dragonology and the like, our Hermione inherited it from me.” The professor, who up until this point had been taking careful note of the Granger family dynamic, smiled broadly. 

“You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear, then, that dragons do in fact exist in the magical world.” She cut in, and Hermione watched as her father had much the same reaction as she had two years prior. 

“Oh my god! Dragons! Will Hermione get one? Can she bring one home? Do they speak?” Tom cackled, his high pitched laughter ringing around Hermione’s head and almost drowning out the Professor’s disappointing replies of no to all three. _“Well now we know. I can’t believe I never asked where your dragon thing came from.”_

_“I do not,”_ Began Hermione hotly, _“Have a dragon_ ** _thing_** _. I just happen to think that creatures of myth and legend are fascinating, as you should well understand. We might even be able to speak to them in Parseltongue. Quite frankly Tom, I don’t know why you don't have a bit more of a dragon thing yourself—”_

Just as Hermione was working her way up to a lecture, Tom redirected her attention to Professor McGonagall, who was looking down at her with a small smile. “I think, Miss Granger, that your parents would both be quite well suited to Gryffindor, were they magical. I think we can expect the same of you. It was my house, while at Hogwarts. I am also it’s current head.” Tom scoffed loudly in the back of Hermione’s mind, who grinned and thanked the professor even as Tom assured her that they would, as planned, go nowhere but Slytherin. Hermione must have missed the professor’s explanation of the four houses, but it wasn’t as if she needed it. 

“There is a place quite near here called Diagon Alley where, should you decide to take your place at Hogwarts, you will be able to purchase everything you need. It is a magical shopping district.” Said Professor McGonagall, interrupting her train of thought extremely successfully. Finally, finally she and Tom would be going to Diagon. Hermione was practically vibrating with excitement. 

“Oh, can we go today, can we please?” Asked Hermione, turning wide beseeching eyes on her parents. The professor smiled indulgently, clearly used to this performance. 

Diagon alley was, for want of less trite description, completely magical. Tom’s laughter echoed in her head as she thought it, but Hermione couldn’t resist the description. Here there were two old women discussing whatever the Wizengamot had been debating the previous session, there was a man enchanting his bags to follow him, and best of all, thought Hermione gleefully, they were all wearing what appeared to be actual robes. Tom had always told her magical people did, but she’d never quite believed him until now.

_“I like goblins,”_ Tom had said as they crossed the gated threshold of Gringotts, _“You can always trust them to have their own interests at heart, and something interesting to say about yours, and they keep secrets better than a wizard ever will. They have their own language too. I know a bit, but we obviously can’t appear to right now. We are playing the part of wide eyed newcomer.”_

Hermione stayed quiet as her father exchanged the money they would need, wondering where they would go first once they had. Tom, as usual, had the answer. _“You’ll want robes first, to blend in and then your wand.”_

Oh yes. How on earth had she forgotten? After today there would be no more simple little control tricks or summoning charms. It was going to be transfiguration, that tricky set of fire charms Tom wanted her to learn, some of the more interesting rituals. It was going to be hexes, shield charms, parselmagic, anything she or Tom could possibly think of. She was going to be able to do serious magic now. 

_“Shouldn’t we go for the wand first?”_ She asked. 

_“No, Ollivander’s is too close to Knockturn for comfort with us and your parents dressed like muggles.”_

_“But they are muggles.”_ Pointed out Hermione fairly, and Tom sighed. 

_“No need to tell anyone that who doesn't know already. The magical world is fairly prejudiced against them, and not entirely without good reason. After all we were driven underground during the witch hunts by muggles.”_ Hermione worried at her lower lip, concerned for her parents before she was struck by another far more worrying thought. 

_“Is there much prejudice against people like me then, born from muggles but with magic?”_ Tom seemed to pause at that, as if he didn’t quite know how to reply. Hermione’s heart sank. 

_“There was when I went to Hogwarts and I don’t suspect it’s changed too much, but remember Hermione, power is what people respect in the end. Power and knowledge, both of which we happen to have in abundance.”_ Hermione did her best not to pink slightly at the compliment, but she knew Tom was right. Somewhat reassured, she turned and suggested Tom’s plan to the adults. 

“Can we go to the robes shop first?” Asked Hermione as brightly as she could. Both her parents looked on in absolute stunned silence. “You know, when in Rome…” She added to no avail.

“Well,” Said her mother, a growing smile, “I never thought I’d see the day our Hermione wanted clothes before books.” Her father put a hand to her forehead and jerked away as if burned. 

“A fever of 200 degrees and a desire for clothes shopping, she’s clearly been possessed by something.” Her mother laughed but Professor McGonagall frowned, and Hermione shrunk beneath her gaze. Silently wishing her parents knew more about wizarding culture, enough to pass as magical at least, Hermione pulled her mother towards the doors of the bank. 

“Possession, in the wizarding world, while not common is not to be taken lightly.” Said the professor sharply as they made their way out. “I would refrain from such jokes in future.” Hermione fought a smile, Tom laughing again inside her mind. After all, they knew all about possession. 

Hermione had begged her mother to get a few sets of casual robes, and her mother, still not over the novelty of being asked for clothes, acquiesced easily enough. When they re-entered Diagon Alley they at least looked the part of a wizarding family, so it was a Hermione dressed in dove grey witches robes and a heavy royal blue cloak that entered the wand shop. That was when things became, for want of a better phrase, utterly odd. “Ah Minerva,” came a creaking, whispered greeting from behind the doorway, just out of their lines of sight. Hermione fought not to jump. “Fir and dragon heartstring, nine and a half inches I believe, how are you treating each other?” 

“Very well thank you Ollivander, as you well know.” Snapped Professor McGonagall. “I have brought one of our first-years-to-be today for a wand, so perhaps we ought to start with the process rather than hanging about chit-chatting.” Her words neutralised the oddness of the shop in seconds flat. Her words took the strange atmosphere Ollivander had cultivated and shredded it like old newspaper. It was, Hermione decided, the coolest thing she’d seen McGonagall do yet, excluding of course her animagus transformation. Hermione made the decision then and there to never get on Minerva McGonagall’s bad side if she could help it. 

Tom agreed with this sentiment fervently, a distinct note of respect in his tone, but what the professor had hexed Tom’s year mate Titus Lestrange with for daring to ask her on a date, Hermione never did find out. Just as Tom was beginning to explain Ollivander fixed his pale, watery eyes on Hermione, and he trailed off into silence. Ollivander stared at Hermione with laser focus, as if peeling back her skin to see what kind of magic she had. Hermione had the bizarre urge to hide away, and felt herself retreating to the back of her mind before he realised what she was doing. Tom had disappeared entirely, sliding back into the diary through their bond before she had the chance to. Hermione gritted her teeth and went back towards the front of their mind. It was not, she decided, anything good, if Tom had run the way he had. Perhaps it had only been fear of discovery, but it unsettled her either way. Screwing up her courage, Hermione nodded brusquely. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Sir,”

Then it began. Hermione tried wand after wand, Tom creeping back into her mind after forty minutes had passed, assuming they would be well on their way only to find the they were still inside the wand shop. Hermione didn’t know what to do. If she hadn’t practiced magic for two years, she knew she would be beginning to worry about not being magical after all. Ollivander had thought he had her match in a vine wood and dragon heartstring wand which emitted a thick silver mist that curled into an infinity sign, but it felt somehow off to Hermione, as if it was the right shoe on a left foot. Then again he thought he had struck lucky with a holly and phoenix feather wand, but that one felt wrong too. Hermione was near tears despite her best efforts, and her parents were both grumbling. At the ninety minute mark Professor McGonagall reached her limit. 

“Do you or do you not, Ollivander, have a match for Miss Granger?” She said, her voice a shade of frozen that reminded Hermione of Tom. Ollivander shrank back and shot Hermione a considering look. “No, I don’t believe I do Minerva.” He said, then turned his pale gaze back to Hermione. “For the first time in my career, I believe I will have to refer you to another. Neither the vine nor the holly wand you tried truly suit you as you are. Something has changed, I fear, from what it should be. Paths have diverged from their course. I will send you to Gregorovitch.” 

“Gregorovitch? Ollivander she’s a muggleborn. Surely—” Said the professor, clearly too startled to be mindful of her audience.

“He is my only equal near enough to avoid key-lag, unless of course you were to venture into Knockturn, but one would hope those wands are not the kind our Miss Granger will fit. Anyway, he’ll like the challenge, and no doubt the opportunity to gloat.” 


	10. The wand.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione gets her wand.

Tom didn’t know what it meant, that Hermione had not found a wand at Ollivanders. That troubled him. He too had sensed the sparking connection of her magic to the vine wood wand, but it was warped. Wrong somehow, as if it should have fitted but did not. Tom wondered, vaguely, if his presence had changed Hermione’s magic more permanently than he initially thought. It was possible, especially as Hermione had given him unfettered access to it over the past year. He’d never designed the horcrux to do something like what he was trying now. He had designed it to take over a witch or wizard entirely, bend the lesser mind to breaking point and unleash Slytherin’s monster. In Hermione Tom had found, if not an equal the potential for one, and her soul was not something he was willing to crush under heel. He had designed the diary to be the first of many after all, found a way to give him mind magics subtler than any a full soul could accomplish, but it had not been designed for co-existence like this. For all he knew, Hermione’s magic might have shifted significantly from what it would have been without him. 

He’d never had the chance to look into wandlore, curious after he had felt his own wand so thoroughly connect to his magic but too busy filling his mind with things he could actually use to protect himself or further his aims to study it much. It startled him somewhat, how much he wanted that feeling of utter connectedness for Hermione too, how much he wanted her to have something as perfect. Something that would make her magic come alive in that heady way his own did. Had. In the privacy of the back of Hermione’s mind he grimaced at the reminder. Yes, they would have to do something about that, but it would wait. Right now he needed to plan how this was going to go, and reassure Hermione with what he knew of Gregorovitch. Sadly, it was less than he would like. Far less. 

They were going beyond his knowledge of the wizarding world now, to somewhere in Wizarding Europe if he understood Ollivander and McGonagall correctly (and wasn’t that the strangest thing? The only Gryffindor he’d ever respected had come to introduce his Hermione to the wizarding world). Gregorovitch was a blood purist wand-maker who, if his memory served correctly, was not one of Grindelwald’s while Tom was at school. Dark, but not allied with the current reigning Lord. He’d toyed with the idea of recruiting the man himself, indeed the living half of his soul had probably gone on to do so, and oh, it burnt Tom that he didn’t know for sure. How could he prepare Hermione for this meeting, he thought a little desperately as McGonagall created a portkey, and how could he do it without drawing attention? He coiled the slivers of his stolen magic closer about him and Hermione shifted in response. Her magic responded in kind, coiling through their mind in a protective swirl, and Tom smiled. It was their magic really, not Hermione’s alone. It trusted his instincts as if it were his own. 

_“Tom, we’re going to be fine.”_ Said Hermione firmly. Tom hadn’t realised until she snapped him out of his slightly frantic preparation for a wandless duel (they at least had the element of surprise if it came to it) how much anxiety he was projecting through Hermione’s mind. He paused, forced himself to slow their breathing and then slid further into Hermione’s mind. If they were to face the abyss of the unknown, he wanted a front row seat. _“I’ve got this. We’ve got this. Soon we’ll have a wand and then,”_ She said, a glittering hunger to her final word, _“Then we’ll be unstoppable.”_ Tom couldn’t help but agree, dark glee surging through him at the declaration. It was true, he could feel it in the shorn edge of his soul and the swirl of their magic. He and Hermione were going to do great things together. 

As they hurtled through space Tom was viscerally reminded of quite how much he hated portkeys. There was, in his well researched opinion, no worse mode of magical transport, and he included _brooms_ on that list. Hermione seemed to agree, promptly throwing up the moment they arrived. She clicked her fingers thoughtlessly, too disoriented to remember why she shouldn’t help clear up the mess she’d made and the vomit vanished. Tom hoped very much, then, that their little cleaning spell had gone unnoticed. Unfortunately for them, Minerva McGonagall had always been stunningly, irritatingly observant. “Very impressive Miss Granger,” She said, her tone surprised but warm, “Very impressive indeed. Tell me, do you often do things like that?” 

_“Tom, what should I say.”_ Thought Hermione, her mind buzzing with sudden bright fear. It took Tom a moment to register the taste of the fear, to realise that it was felt on his behalf. _“She saw it, she saw and I’m not supposed to even know what a vanishing charm is yet, what do I say?”_ Hermione was panicking. Dealing with the unexpected, thought Tom bitterly to himself, was not Hermione’s forte. True, they had let their secret slip, but it was only a small one in the long term. She was proficient at wandless magic, that was all they would be able to glean from this. 

_“Everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry. Act a little confused, as if you assume all children can control their magic rather than just us.”_

“Of course Professor, can’t everyone? I can make things float towards me when I need them, and I can make rubbish disappear like I just did. I can do all sorts, make things move without touching them or make people not notice me when I’m hiding.” Said Hermione, and then, before Tom could stop her, before he could warn her about the skill being rare and hated, she was repeating his mistake verbatim. “I can speak to snakes too. Is that normal, for someone like me?” Minerva did her best not to jolt backwards, but Tom hadn’t missed the impulse written into her body language. She remembered the chamber after all. She had been a seventh year at the time. She would not take this well. Luckily, Hermione’s parent’s were concerned for a different reason entirely. 

“Hermione dear, why didn’t you tell us?” Her father said. His face was twisted into something hurt, something almost betrayed, and Tom again steeled himself for violence. Hermione didn’t appear to realise what was about to happen. 

“I couldn’t Dad. You wouldn’t have believed me, those are always the rules with magic.” She said confidently. To Tom’s reluctant surprise, the sentiment garnered not a smack from Hermione’s father but a laugh. The reason for this escaped him, but then their small body was being swept into a hug and their hair ruffled. Tom despised this, but Hermione felt such a rush of affection that he was all but swept along with the emotion. 

“A mudblood parselmouth. How intriguing.” The voice came from everywhere at once, but the speaker stepped into the room before Tom could do more than tense their magic, ready for a fight. He was ancient, pale and washed out, almost insubstantial. There was something fundamentally wrong with this wizard, something wrong in his magic. Tom could feel it. McGonagall was looking at the speaker with a very different reason for discomfort, appalled at the slur, but Hermione was only confused. Then it hit Tom. He’d never explained it to her. _“Mudblood is an outdated and somewhat derogatory term for those born of muggle parentage.”_ He thought carefully, _“But it doesn’t matter. It is no more than a word. If you let it hurt you you give the speaker power over you. We should just treat it like any other descriptor.”_ Hermione stiffened her spine, drew herself up and looked Gregorovitch in the eye. 

“Is that what it’s called, speaking to snakes?” 

Gregorovitch’s lips twisted into an unlikely smile, and in an instant Tom was coldly certain that he knew they were lying. “Yes, it is.” was all he said. “You’re here for a wand aren't you? Ollivander wouldn’t know how to deal with something like this.” Hermione nodded, the three adults they had come here with forgotten. “Follow me.” McGonagall made as if to follow, as did Hermione’s parents but none of them could move. 

“Gregorovitch, what do you mean by this? I’ll not allow a prospective Hogwarts student to be left in a potentially—” Began McGonagall, but Gregorovitch only laughed. 

“Relax my dear, I’ll not render our young friend down for her core potential.” he said, a dark smile that made his already unnerving appearance wilder playing about his mouth, “I merely insist on privacy for my methods, especially from the British. You never know with Ollivander. You have my word she’ll come to no harm.” 

He didn’t even spare Hermione’s parents a glance, clearly not eager to waste his breath on muggles. Tom was beginning to like this man more and more. A doorway rippled into being close to the man, and Hermione steeled her nerves enough to follow him into the gloom beyond. “You’re an interesting little specimen, little miss parselmouth. I’m picking up the faintest edge of blood magic and a proclivity for mind artes, and that’s just with a skim view of your magic. What’s your name?” Asked Gregorovitch as they walked the length of a long, imposing corridor. Tom was more than a little disturbed that this man could see anything about their magic, but at least they could be sure he wouldn’t run straight to Dumbledore with the information. 

“Hermione Granger. I assume you’re one Mr Gregorovitch?” 

“I am indeed.” He replied with a laugh. “And your other? The one you carry with you, what name do they go by?” With a horrible sinking feeling Tom took the reigns, Hermione all but fleeing to the back of her own mind when Tom offered her the chance. 

“Me? I’m Tom.” He said evenly. The man would get nothing more out of him than that. It was even the truth. “But we’re just here for a wand. I think it’ll be vine wood, but—” he began, but Gregorovitch held up a hand clearly meant to ensure Tom’s silence. 

“Tell me nothing of that fool Ollivander’s theorising. I have more precise methods than he could ever comprehend. I’ll need you to share control to make a balanced wand. Can you do that?” Tom nodded. 

“It’ll be harder to talk, but yes.” At his words Hermione coming forward until their movements became the stilted, jittering motions that would always remind Tom of his first, delightful rainy night in almost fifty years. 

They soon found themselves in something of a laboratory, Hermione and Tom equally curious about what was to come. It was odd, the way being balanced made Hermione’s thoughts bleed into his own like this. Tom wondered if his own were doing the same, and the knowledge seemed to flow into his awareness that they did. It wasn’t a conversation now, nothing nearly as simple as that. It was a shared experience, a shared mind. Tom was very very curious about it, but he put it aside in favour of looking around. The laboratory was well lit, with grand oak shelves soaring to the ceiling, filled with glass gars of anything and everything. Gregorovitch plucked a hair from their head and asked them to write their names on a scrap of parchment, one on each side. Tom crept forwards to write his, densely and in the smallest writing he could manage with the blood quill before allowing Hermione to do the same, conveying the concept of what the quill would do without words. At least they were in good company, with the blood magic they had done still apparently tangible in their aura. 

The man dropped his hair and paper into a small vial of a potion Tom didn’t recognise. The potion flashed white, then black before settling into a shade of blue closest to midnight, shot through with a ribbon of glistening blood red and gold fragments that swirled in a pattern Tom couldn’t follow. It was beautiful. It was profound. It affected Tom rather more deeply than he had expected a simple little potion to. It was them, he realised as he watched the odd, vicious swirl of colours. Their magic. 

Gregorovitch raised it to the light, smiled and began to pull different things out of the jars and boxes that lined the room. “Yes yes, Ivy and yew.” he muttered, apparently to the room in general given attention he was paying Tom and Hermione. “But the core, the core will be fun. How to combine you, what agent to use? Oh it’s been years since I’ve had this sort of challenge. Basilisk scale? Hmmm, perhaps.” He wheeled around to face them, shook his head and one back to his muttering. After another five minutes he began to smile, the expression almost unnerving enough to rattle even Tom. He was clearly losing his touch. “What of phoenix bone? Now there’s a thought. Yes, yes I think so. A rare one, that’s for sure, and so delightfully conflicted. Very interesting indeed. And bound in blood, I believe, seeing as you seem familiar with the art.” He snapped his fingers and ingredients flew towards them each sending a jolt down their spine as they brushed past and came to settle on the laboratory bench behind them. 

Watching the man work was magnetic, but all thought flooded straight out of Tom’s mind when their fingers finally came into contact with the finished handle. The world narrowed down to just him, Hermione and the wand that they would share. It was powerful, crackling with energy as if it had been waiting for eternity to be made, to become theirs. Perhaps it had been. The wood was black, a tracery of minute fronds of golden ivy twisting their way across the handle and up to the wand tip. The core, hidden deep, was the wishbone of a phoenix. Tom had no idea how one would go about obtaining such a bone without the phoenix regenerating in fire, and he was enthralled by the prospect. They would have to do some research. Perhaps, he thought with a smile, Dumbledore’s phoenix would be able to help. 

Despite his almost painful need to try a spell, Tom let Hermione take the first chance. This was her moment, after all. He had already done it once. Hermione chose a neat transfiguration, morphing the air above the laboratory bench into a thick layer of comfortable cushions. “What’s the significance of the dual wood?” Asked Hermione, now casting a perfect spell for harmless little bluebell flames she’d never quite been able to master without a wand. She could summon fire, but blue or not it tended to burn things. This time the spell was perfect. 

“Ivy is loyal, lucky and good for healing spells. You’re also likely to be close to at least one person who wields a holly wand, they tend to find each other in unlikely circumstances. Yew is good for our kind of magic, the olde ways. It’ll serve you best for rituals, spells of the mind and curses. They each provide a balance for the other. Like you.” Hermione smiled and sent another wave of warmth towards him. _“Tom you’ve got to try, it feels incredible.”_

As soon as Tom was in control he turned the wand sharply against it’s maker, eyes burning red. “Thank you for the wand Gregorovitch, we are in your debt.” 

“Is it a debt you will pay?” Asked the wand maker, a faint tremor in his voice. Fear. It rushed through Tom’s blood like firewhiskey, the knowledge that once again, he could be feared. Hermione radiated worry from the back of his mind, but Tom payed it no mind. He would explain it away afterwards, and a secrecy curse wouldn’t be too bad. Hermione had justified far crueller actions on his behalf before. 

“It is.” He said softly, “Keep our secrets and you need not fear.” 

“Et arcana cohibere.” Breathed Tom, and their magic rushed from him. This new wand seemed to revel in the dark curse, Hermione’s magic crackling gleefully as it leapt to the task of sealing away their secrets in a shroud of potential pain. It was a feeling only dark magic could produce, and _fuck,_ Tom had forgotten what it was like. It was breathing fresh air for the first time in fifty years, it was the feeling of rain pooling in Hermione’s tiny, pale hands. It was magic as he’d never felt it before. Hermione surged forwards, her body shivering as she took back control and fingered her wand contemplatively. _“What was that?”_ She thought at Tom, _“It felt so alive.”_

_“That, my dear, is what real magic tastes like.”_

* * *

Minerva McGonagall was having quite the week. It been relatively normal until Wednesday evening, when she had introduced herself to Hermione Granger. The small witch then proceeded to rattle Minerva’s world for the next four hours semi-continuously, and Minerva still didn’t quite know how to feel about any of her conversations with Miss Granger. She was stunningly intelligent and frighteningly in control of her magic for one so young. She had utterly failed to find a wand at Ollivander’s and then managed to strike up a decidedly friendly manner with a known blood purist within minutes of meeting him. A blood purist who, by the time they left, was treating her with something that at least looked fairly close to genuine affection. It was almost worrying. She had also intentionally, wandlessly vanished something before Minerva’s very eyes, all but asked if she could have a dragon and revealed that she, a confirmed muggle-born of all things, could speak parseltongue. That would have been quite enough of a week all on its own, but then Thursday had dawned. 

Thursday’s strangeness hadn’t well and truly become apparent until around midday (thank Fingal for small mercies) when a rather bedraggled owl that looked as if it might be wild accosted her on the way to the great hall. It was carrying a small note asking her to meet in the three broomsticks at a quarter to six the following evening from, of all people, Quirinus Quirrell, who seemed to be back in the uk. She’d never been particularly close to the ex-claw, he had after all dropped her subject after owls, and he’d always seemed rather timid around her even when they were colleagues. That he was inviting her for a drink was odd enough on its own, but then there was the time he’d suggested. After all, quarter to six was exactly when she’d arrived at the Granger residence and she didn’t think she could deal with another shock like that. Despite the prickling across her cheekbones (a sense she had developed after completing her animagus transformation) she had jotted down a brief reply saying that she would be there. Then there had been the mess with the owl. It had, rather than waiting patiently as a post owl ought to, begun to fling itself around in a most unnatural manner, hit a window pane and promptly died.   


Now she was hurrying down to Hogsmeade and hoping against hope that her evening would be a relatively normal one. Quirrell was waiting for her in one of the booths, resting a languid leg against the seat opposite him in what was easily the most relaxed pose she’d ever seen him adopt around her. “Quirinus, this was an unexpected pleasure.” She said, half expecting him to jolt like he had always been so prone to doing when she walked past him studying in the library back in his school days. He did not. In fact, he let a slow smile grow across his face and inclined his head slightly. 

“Minerva, it’s wonderful to see you again.” He said quietly, the cadence to his voice entirely new. Minerva was completely nonplussed, if impressed by the clear changes in what had until recently been a rather diffident Ravenclaw. 

“Indeed.” She managed, “I can see your break from muggle studies has done you the world of good, what have you been up to?” 

He laughed a little, dark eyes glinting. “Oh, this and that. I’ve picked up a few new skills and hobbies. I did a short course on duelling in Albania and developed quite the taste for it, but I should save the pleasantries for later. I have a suggestion that I think you’ll like.” While Minerva tried to wrap her head around the idea of timid little Quirinus Quirrell duelling in Albania of all places, he put his cards on the table. “We need a competent defence professor at Hogwarts. They’ve been getting steadily worse since my first year.” Minerva snorted. It was very true. In her opinion they hadn't had a properly decent defence professor since her own school days. 

“And your plan?” She asked, intrigued. 

“I want to switch to defence.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick update for you all, hope you like it. What did you think? I personally really enjoyed writing it and am keen for your feedback. Comments feed the muse, so don't be shy. I promise writing to me won't steal your soul away. 
> 
> see you in hell x


	11. New friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day out in Diagon and it's consequences.

Hermione’s year seven in muggle secondary school flew past paradoxically fast, all things considered. She had been expecting every day to drag out into an eternity, but between her classes (boring), homework (easy) and Tom, the school days rushed past. Somehow Samhain had been and gone before they had been back to Gringotts, Hermione’s days a flurry of spell theory and rune comprehension sheets Tom had clearly been holding out on her with. Her parents had agreed with surprising grace to let her spend at least one afternoon per week in Diagon Alley to ‘immerse herself in wizarding culture’ (Her mother’s words) or ‘find out how to smuggle home a dragon’ (Her father’s), so she got to spend glorious hours browsing through Flourish and Blots or the slightly more shifty bookshop on the corner of Knockturn Alley that didn’t quite have a name, visiting the library or, on occasion, a wonderful little stationary shop. Today however, they had a different plan. Tom wanted her to take an inheritance test at Gringotts. They’d been saving odds and ends her parents gave her for spending money for two months to afford one. 

As soon as she stepped into the foyer she spotted him. It was sort of hard not to, the ostentatious blond was so imposing. Tom shifted, drawing their magic in around them defensively as he followed her gaze and Hermione felt an echo of his cold distaste. _“That’s a Malfoy, my school friend Abraxas’ son I suspect. I dislike him.”_

_“On a personal level, what did he do?”_

_“He threatened to burn the diary with curse-fire.”_ Said Tom nonchalantly, and Hermione gasped, forgetting they were not alone. 

_“So, Malfoy’s weaknesses. What are we going to do about his attack?”_ She narrowed her gaze considering the man carefully. 

_“Currently,”_ said Tom dryly, _“We are going to take an inheritance test. Malfoy can wait, I’m very intrigued to see what results we get.”_ Hermione turned on her heel, magic spitting angrily inside her at the thought of letting a threat to Tom’s life go unanswered in kind, but he was right. They had a plan. 

“May your gold ever flow, and your descendants prosper.” Said Hermione stiffly, her throat a little irritated. She and Tom had spent hours going over what little he knew of goblin language and custom, and had supplemented that with two reasonably unbiased books, but the rough tones of the language were much more difficult on her throat when she was outside the diary. The goblin she had spoken to blinked slowly before smiling thinly. 

“May your magic grow and your form remain strong.” He had replied with the greeting for a young magic user, as they had expected he would. Hermione was just glad that she had understood him well enough to know. Their language had nothing on Parseltongue for comprehension difficulty, but it wasn’t exactly french either. 

“I would have an inheritance test for gold of my pocket.” She said. The goblin’s face spilt into a wider smile. Hermione returned it, glad she had done something right, even if she wasn’t sure what.

“I would have gold of your pocket for an inheritance test. Please follow me.” 

Hermione followed the goblin through a set of small doors and into a simple chamber containing nothing but a stone bowl and an ornately carved dagger. Hermione walked towards it and, at the goblin’s instruction, made a fairly deep cut into the skin of her palm. She held it over the bowl for an exact minute, then withdrew it and quietly charmed the skin back together. She had been practicing healing since Gregorovitch told them the wand would be good at it, and now she was very glad she had. For a long time they stood there waiting. When Tom had shown her his memory of this moment a deep green banner entwined with snakes and the symbol of the deathly hallows had appeared. Now there was nothing. After ten minutes, Hermione knew what she was. She’d known from the start, from the moment Gregorovitch had said it the he was right. She was a muggle born. A mudblood. Tom had been convinced that her magical prowess might be from some hidden family tie, but it appeared not. She nodded brightly to the goblin and handed him the bag of gold they had saved. Tom remained awfully quiet until they had left the room. 

The goblin was looking at her with a deeply confused expression, but Hermione was too busy trying to figure out what emotion she was getting flashes of from Tom to really take it in, so it wasn’t until he put a hand on her elbow and stopped her that she noticed anything amiss. This time when he spoke it was in a scratchy but perfectly well spoken english. “You are of muggles only, the first of your line. How is it that you know our tongue, our greetings so soon after finding the world of wizardkind?” 

“I have a friend,” she said quietly, “Who was friend to you before me.” 

“It is a funny thing, that you have this friend who knows us well. Wizards who respect our customs are rarer than you night think. I thank you Hermione Granger, first of your line.” 

_“Tom?”_ Hermione thought quietly as she left the bank, _“Are you okay?”_

_“Yes,”_ He replied, _“Yes I’m fine. I was just a little shocked that you really are a mudblood.”_ It had been Hermione’s idea to try reclaiming the slur, she’d read about it in one of her muggle history books and liked the idea. Tom agreed, saying in an off handed way that they shouldn’t let words have that kind of emotional power over them, but it felt more powerful now the they knew for sure she was one.

_“I always kind of suspected it to be honest.”_ Said Hermione ruefully, finally voicing an opinion she’d been harbouring since Tom suggested the inheritance test in the first place, _“It just didn’t seem very likely that I’d have this great ancestry behind me just out of the blue. We can’t all be as lucky as you Mr Heir to House Slytherin.”_ Tom’s laughter was still slightly subdued, but it didn’t remain so for long. 

_“Well, even if your not an heir to Slytherin himself you can speak like one. We should get a familiar.”_ The abrupt change in tone threw Hermione for a moment, but then she began to grin, making a beeline for the magical menagerie. 

“Hello, I was wondering if you have any snakes.” Said Hermione brightly. The shop assistant’s face, previously smiling and at least fairly kind, closed down completely and he shook his head. “Oh, why not? They’re traditional familiars aren't they?” She said, less certain now. Tom, to her surprise, seemed just as confused as she was. He had seen plenty of snakes here, and would very well have bought one if he had the money. 

“No.” said the assistant coolly “Snake familiars aren’t allowed at Hogwarts, or anywhere else civilised.”Hermione frowned. She _knew_ that wasn’t right. 

“But why? I don't understand.” 

“Maybe you should go kid. Find someone else to bother about your bloody snakes, try somewhere down Knockturn. That’s the kind of place you’d get a familiar like _that_.” 

His lip curled, and Hermione tensed up, her wand dropping into her hand from where she’d concealed it in her sleeve. Before she could reply with either a curse or another question however, an incredibly beautiful dark skinned woman cleared her throat and spoke, her voice very soft and very dangerous. “I wouldn’t suggest going somewhere like that to a child if I were you.” An accent curled about the ends of the words and Hermione placed it as Italian after a moment’s concentration.

_“Hermione,”_ Tom said slowly, the glee palpable in his thoughts, _“We’ll need to be very polite thanking this woman. She’s wearing a bone coven ring.”_ Hermione sucked in a huge lungful of shocked air. A coven ring meant she practiced advanced ritual magic. A bone coven ring meant she practiced exactly the kind of advanced ritual magic that both Tom and Hermione liked best. 

The shop boy was floundering now, but the woman was having none of his half hearted apologies. “You suggest Knockturn as a joke? For what, wanting to show a bit of house pride? She can’t be more than ten. This country is insane.” She snapped. It was only at that moment that Hermione even noticed the boy standing on the woman’s other side. He had enough of her features that he couldn’t be anything but her son, and for a split second Hermione felt a surge of jealousy. No, she thought to herself, closing her eyes. She liked that she was mudblood. She got to start her own story. Reminding herself of this fact was much easier when she wasn’t being faced with the son of a witch who wore a bone coven ring. _“We should make friends,”_ Said Tom. Luckily for them, the boy seemed to agree. 

“Hi,” said the boy, his accent much stronger than his mothers. “I’m Blaise.” 

“Hermione.” She replied, glad he hadn’t offered his last name. “Your mum’s really great for saying all this. I was just going to hex him.” Blaise’s eyebrow rose incredulously. 

“You can do hexes?” He asked. Hermione grinned. 

“Watch this.” She said confidently, and cast a careful little bad luck hex Tom had been wanting to try since they’d found it in one of her knew books. It worked perfectly. The shop assistant’s elbow just happened to knock over a stack of files behind the desk the next moment, and when he ducked to pick them up again Hermione heard the distinct sound of skull hitting desk-underside. She grinned. Blaise looked suitably impressed. 

“That’s wonderful casting.” he said admiringly, and Hermione grinned. Before she could reply however, his mother was smiling down at her too. 

“Blaise is right child. That was remarkable for someone your age.” 

“Thank you for stepping in when you did ma’am, I owe you a debt of gratitude which I will pay before moon’s bright next.” Replied Hermione carefully. 

The woman blinked slowly at her, smile darkening slightly as she recognised the meaning behind the words. _“Well done Hermione. That was masterfully handled. We have her interest now.”_

“And which house do you hail from child?” Asked the woman. Tom was worried, Hermione could feel it echoing though her mind, but she thought she would be fine. If the worst came to the worst, she still had plenty of surprises. After all, no one knew about her more advanced casting abilities yet. 

“I am of house Granger, first of my line.” She said imperiously. There was a beat of total silence, and then the woman threw her head back and laughed. Hermione was still tensed, ready to cast, but she didn’t quite know what laughter meant. Tom evidently didn’t know how to process it either, radiating confusion from the back of her mind. 

“Would you like to accompany us for the day then, first witch of the Granger line? Blaise and I are about to stop somewhere in The Syde Ways for lunch.” Hermione nodded eagerly, not bothering to put her wand away just in case it was a trap. 

The Syde Ways were brilliant. They were a little interconnected network of narrow streets filled with fancy restaurants and clothes shops, foreign looking names curling across shop fronts that sold everything from magical artefacts to stationary. Hermione had been trying as best she could not to gawk, but with every street they went down it got steadily harder to stop herself. She absolutely _loved_ magic. Tom had fully cheered up, coming far enough forward that he didn’t miss anything, so it was him rather than Hermione who noticed. People were staring. Not, thankfully, at them, but at Blaise’s mother. As surreptitiously as she could Hermione cast an eavesdropping spell towards the table of a particularly ornate restaurant. What they heard only confused her more. 

“Maura Zabini, in the flesh.” 

“Is she hunting again?” 

“No you fool, she has her son with her.” 

“And another one, do you recognise the little girl? She might be a new in-law to-be.” 

“Poor girl.” 

The words made little sense, so Hermione shook off the spell and refocussed on her own surroundings. “So little Granger, am going to have the pleasure of your first name?” asked Maura (If those men discussing her hand been right about her name) with a kind smile. 

“Hermione. And yours?” 

“Maura darling. Maura Zabini.” There was a slight pause, as if Maura and Blaise were waiting for some kind of reaction, but the name meant nothing to Hermione. 

“Thanks again for telling off that shop assistant for me.” Said Hermione, not sure how else to proceed with the conversation and hoping that she hadn’t been rude. Maura laughed. 

“It’s no trouble darling, he was being rather rude.” 

“Do you have any idea why?” asked Hermione, jumping at the opportunity to assuage her curiosity. Tom crept forward in her mind, just as eager for the woman’s explanation as she was. 

Blaise coughed and stared at her as if she’d grown another head. “You mean you don’t know?” Hermione rolled her eyes. 

“Would I really be asking if I did?” She pointed out. _“Little idiot.”_ Snapped Tom. Hermione couldn’t help but agree, even if it was a bit harsh. 

“It’s an old fear, especially in Britian, but it’s worse now than it used to be.” Said Maura gently, “A very powerful dark wizard who was a widely known parselmouth tried to seize power here about thirty years ago, so snakes became much less popular as familiars. They’re seen as somewhat dark nowadays.” 

“Oh.” Said Hermione quietly. That would explain it. Her and Tom had been so focussed on learning magic that they’d barely glanced at modern history beyond checking if the dark Lord Grindelwald (who Tom had a strange kind of admiration for) had been defeated. Evidently that had been an oversight. 

“So,” said Blaise when Hermione went quiet, “Do you know what house you want at Hogwarts? Are you starting next year?” 

“Obviously I want Slytherin, and yeah, I will be.” Blaise winced a little. 

“Slytherin might not be—” He began, before trailing off. Hermione sighed. 

“I know they don’t like mudbloods much but they’ll just have to deal with it.” Blaise’s eyes were wide, and it took Hermione a moment to figure out why. “Oh relax, it’s just a word. I’m reclaiming it you know, mudblood and proud?” Blaise did not, so Hermione began to explain what she meant, hyper-aware of the eavesdropping charms buzzing around their table. 

After a delicious lunch Blaise and Hermione exchanged addresses and a promise to write before parting ways. Hermione was inclined to count him as her second wizarding friend despite his slightly (very) irritating habit of asking completely redundant questions, but Tom had his reservations. As soon as they were alone Hermione headed straight for Diagon library, and old haunt of Tom’s from his schooldays which had got more than a little run down in his long absence. Then Hermione and Tom well and truly hit the books. They had so much to learn.

It was two weeks after Yule when they finally found the recently vanquished Dark Wizard’s actual name, on account of a truly ridiculous fixation every writer seemed to have to putting it in print. Those two words changed everything. _Lord Voldemort._ It sent a wave of something through Tom that Hermione couldn’t identify, to see that name. Her pulse picked up, their magic responding to whatever Tom was feeling with a coiling preparation to do _something_. _“Who is he Tom?”_ Asked Hermione faintly. 

_“That name, I came up with it in my fourth year. I don’t know if he was the other half of my soul or someone who stole my name. Either way, I don’t like it.”_ Hermione jerked in horror. They had spent weeks researching this dark lord, and she knew well by now what exactly he had fought for. 

_“But he persecuted muggleborns. Why Tom? Why would you do something like that? He was a murderer, a lunatic.”_

_“Exactly Hermione, that’s what I don’t like, but we’ve got to remember that history was written by the victors. I wanted to restore magic to its former glory, bring back ritual magic classes and change the laws on forbidden magics the ministry classify as dark, not start a blood war. We must be missing something. I think the books we’ve read probably twisted his ideals into something a lot worse than what they actually were. You know me, and after all you’re my best friend. You know I don’t care about your blood. How much could the other half of me really have changed when we split?”_


	12. Zìháo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione finds her familiar.

Over the next five months they read through every book they could find on the blood war and its political fallout. Hermione was now confident on at least some of it. How it had ended, how it started and who the different factions were, at least. Tom was somewhat obsessive about Lord Voldemort, which meant that Hermione now knew more about blood supremacist ideology than she ever needed to. This had lead to a sort of half formed plan for combatting it, but she didn’t have enough of the pieces to suggest it to Tom yet. The blood war itself was fascinating, horrific and one of the weirdest things she’d ever spent any length of time researching. What kind of baby could end a war? What kind of government failed so utterly to control a terrorist that they needed a baby to save them at all in the first place? How did a baby manage to survive the killing curse? She had enough questions to make herself dizzy. She and Tom agreed that none of it made any sense, but they would have plenty more time to research Harry Potter. To Tom’s utter delight, they would be in the same year as the boy who lived, and Hermione had a nasty feeling that they would be making friends with him no matter how obnoxiously spoiled he had turned out to be. Tom wanted to research his magic, and they would need close proximity for that. 

In early May Hermione and Tom received a letter from Blaise inviting them to join him on ‘the great quest to find a familiar.’ Hermione had laughed reading the letter and asked Morrigan (Maura’s faithful raven familiar) to wait while she wrote a reply as usual. The raven, well used to this routine by now, gave her a singularly unimpressed look and settled down on her window sill. They had been writing perhaps once a fortnight since they met in November, and much to Tom’s irritation Hermione now put Blaise firmly in the category of friend. As soon as she sent the raven off Tom heaved an affected sigh, but Hermione knew he valued Blaise really, even if he did think of him as a connection rather than a friend. _“Well, I suppose I’ll have to suffer through his company for you dear.”_ He thought towards her, and Hermione giggled. 

_“Yes I suppose you will, but we’ve been meaning to get a snake for a while now, Lord Voldemort inspired stigma or not, so we might as well tag along.”_

“So Blaise,” She asked the following Saturday afternoon once all of the small talk had been got out of the way, “What kind of familiar are you looking for?”

“A kneazle.” He said quickly, “They’re a magical kind of—”

“I know what Kneazles are. I’ve read about them. They’re particularly loyal familiars aren't they?” _“Yes, and well known for hunting to capture, not kill like cats do. They’ll bring home sacrificial animals for a ritually inclined witch or wizard.”_ Added Tom quietly. Hermione blinked, storing away the new information. 

“Yeah, and they’re adorable.” Said Blaise easily. “Do you know what kind of snake you want?” Hermione did not, but she had a few ideas. Before she could mention any of them however, Maura stopped outside a large shop. The sign above the door had only one word in it, the swirling calligraphy taking up the entire sign. Familiars. 

Hermione drifted past a large tank full of what appeared to be fish (Why anyone would want a fish familiar was beyond both her and Tom) towards the reptile area, but Tom had other ideas. _“Hermione look at that,”_ he said, an emotion she didn’t recognise colouring his voice. In a small glass case that looked heavily warded sat something she’d never seen before. The creature had feathers of a stunning turquoise, but it was coiled up like a snake, one resentful eye visible in amongst the feathers. Hermione didn’t know what it was, but it was incredibly beautiful. It seemed to be pressed up against the glass in a very uncomfortable manner, too big for its tiny enclosure, and Hermione began to get angry. How could they keep something that large in such a small container? It was cruel. _“Do you think it will speak parseltongue? It looks kind of like a snake.”_

She asked. 

_There’s only one way to find out, but let’s speak it quietly. We don’t want any trouble.”_ Agreeing, Hermione got as close to the cage as she could and began to hiss. 

“Hello, finest of serpents,” It was the first parseltongue phrase she’d ever learnt, and even now it brought a smile to her face to use. 

“I am no serpent little speaker.” Hissed the creature, uncoiling itself as best it could. It had an odd accent, but the words were clear enough. “Your kind would call me occamy.” 

_“An Occamy. Hermione this is incredible. I’ve never even seen one, they’re incredibly rare, and incredibly dangerous. I didn’t even know they could be kept in captivity.”_

“Are you named?” asked Hermione carefully, and the occamy hissed a laugh. 

“I am named, little speaker. My nest mates called me Zìháo before I was taken.” 

“Taken?” Hissed Hermione, confused. 

“I was stolen from my nest when I was being small, for a game of prey and predators with my nest mates.” Hermione’s blood ran utterly cold. How could someone do that to a creature as beautiful as this? It was barbaric. They would have to do something about this. In the back of her mind Tom began to laugh. 

“I’m not going to stand for this.” She hissed to him, anger lending her parseltongue the serpentine accent she usually struggled so much with. “I’ll free you Zìháo.” 

“If you did,” hissed the occamy in return, “I would freely offer you a familiar’s bond, speaker. It will take much power to free me from this glass prison. If you are equal to the task you are equal to the bond of my loyalty.” Tom was too excited to speak. Hermione could tell because he was emitting a glow of joy in her mind and their magic was crackling in anticipation already. 

“I’d be delighted to accept Zìháo. It’s an honour.” 

“Hermione, there you are.” Said Blaise, interrupting her plotting and carrying the biggest cat Hermione had ever seen in his arms. It was beautiful, it’s sleek black fur dappled with spots of blue-grey that shimmered like moonlight on water. Lamp-like amber eyes considered Hermione for a moment and then the creature began to purr, digging wicked claws into Blaise’s cloak in a kneading motion as it did so. “Notturna seems to like you. That’s good, it means you’re trustworthy.” Hermione laughed. “Did you find a familiar?” 

“I found something far more interesting. Look.” Blaise’s eyes went wide as he realised just what the creature behind Hermione was. “Hermione that’s an occamy, they’re XXXX classified and incredibly dangerous even for a trained witch or wizard to be near. They’re illegal to own or sell in every magical jurisdiction. What’s it doing here?” 

“Not being sold, so don’t go setting the aurors on us young man.” Said a third voice. Hermione jumped and spun around. “We’re keeping it for the feather’s, they’re a key ingredient in a handful of very advanced potions.” 

Hermione’s vision went a little red around the edges. “You’re keeping this beautiful, fully sentient creature in a box with barely enough room to turn in for it’s feathers?” She asked, her voice strained. _“We can’t make a scene about it Hermione, keep calm. We’ll figure something out.”_ Tom though at her, his tone more than a little frantic, but Hermione was beyond the point where she could be argued down now. “How could you?” She ranted, “This is wrong. First you steal it from it’s home and then you lock it in a box and now you’re saying it’s all for potions ingredients? This isn’t just wrong, it’s completely inhumane. ” She almost stamped her foot in anger, but managed to suppress the urge. Blaise was looking at her oddly, but Hermione didn’t have the spare energy to wonder why. 

_“Hermione we’re making a scene. Let’s just leave quietly with Blaise and Maura. We can’t do anything about this.”_ Thought Tom, and Hermione set her jaw stubbornly. 

_“We can and we will, Tom. I don’t care if we have to steal Zìháo to do it, we’re going to set him free.”_ Tom seemed both taken with the idea and surprised she’d suggested it, which Hermione was sort of offended by. Surely he couldn’t be that surprised, it was the only way to free poor Zìháo. 

_“If we’re going to steal him, we’ll need to stop drawing attention to ourselves. I wish we hadn’t started this argument, it mean’s we’ll be a suspect.”_

“Come on Blaise, let’s just go.” Said Hermione forcefully, sweeping past the amused shop assistant and back out into the sunlit street. He followed her out, still stroking Notturna with one hand. 

“How did you know it had been stolen Hermione? It didn’t say on the sign or anything.” He said quietly, and Hermione froze. 

How could she explain it? Tom was no help, pointing out that this was in fact her mess, so she could come up with her own excuse. _“Betrayal,”_ Hermione thought at him darkly, but she was too preoccupied with a cover story to put much force into the word. 

“Um, I guessed?” She said, and Tom laughed slightly inside her mind. 

_“Really Hermione? You guessed? I suppose I’ll be coming up with the cover stories when we need them then.”_ Hermione fought the urge to roll her eyes at Tom and continued. “There’s no record of keeping occamies successfully in captivity, so it has to have been born wild.” Blaise let it go with an easy grin and Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. 

“ _I never thought I’d say it but I am. I’m so glad your little friend is stupid Hermione. It makes this kind of thing almost painfully easy.”_

_“He’s not stupid, just not as detail oriented or sceptical as you.”_ Pointed out Hermione. Tom laughed at that, and Hermione had to fight not to join in. 

That night Hermione went into the diary as soon as she could and found a replica of the Familiar shop waiting for her. She looked around with a grin, surprised by how many of the details were perfect. Tom was waiting for her, a small pleased smile on his face. They got to work. Hermione was, she realised with a grin, planning her first proper magical heist. Her dad would be so proud when he found out. They were going to figure out how to break the wards on that stupid glass box, offer Zìháo a home with them and disappear before anyone was any the wiser. If anyone could do it, it was them, and Hermione would never let such a beautiful creature waste away being held captive to provide potions ingredients to undeserving wizards. Tom of course, was only too happy to plot the crime. It was after all, one of his favourite pastimes to work through hypotheticals for breaking into gringotts. They were going to have a field day with this. 

The wards turned out to be much less of a problem than Hermione had anticipated, because while she had forgotten Tom’s ability to absorb magic, he had most definitely not. They actually spent more time trying to convince the rather vengeful little occamy that escaping was much more important than eating the shop keepers than anything else. Zìháo had only very reluctantly agreed to escape because Tom had pointed out the likelihood of surviving an extinction squad from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. That had distracted Hermione, who was wildly incensed that anything like an extinction squad existed unchallenged, but Zìháo had at long last seen sense. After that it was only a matter of sliding the diary onto the top of the case, vanishing a tiny hole in the bottom corner and settling a concealed Zìháo comfortably around her lower arm, where the flare of the robe’s sleeve would conceal him. Hermione was gone long before anyone even noticed that the box was empty. 

“Hey Dad,” Said Hermione as she closed the front door behind her. “You’ll never guess what I did today.” 

_“Hermione what are you doing?”_ Asked Tom, his voice carefully neutral in that way of his that made it obvious he was suppressing confusion or anger, thought she wasn’t quite sure which. 

_“What do you think? I’m telling Dad about Zìháo. He’ll love him.”_ She thought, and without waiting for Tom to formulate a reply pulled up the sleeve of her robes to reveal the occamy curled around her forearm. 

“I found my familiar.” 

“A snake?” 

“No, an occamy. His name is Zìháo and he can grow and shrink at will.” Dad laughed delightedly. 

“Let’s see him then. Properly I mean.” 

Hermione murmured her request to Zìháo, asking him to grow to fit the room as best he could without destroying any of the furniture, and he happily slithered down her arm, extending beautiful lilac wings she hadn’t known he had to slow his descent towards the floor. Something looked a little off about the proportions of his wing span to body length, but she couldn’t quite tell what while he was still so small. Hermione heard her father gasp and refocused on the immediate scene, putting her theories to one side. Zìháo surged upwards, tripling and then tripling again in size until his feathered coils were looped casually around the sofa as if it were a toy. He was beautiful like this, raptor’s beak a shining ivory, intelligent golden eyes big enough to see her reflection in clear as day as his gaze fixed on her. He unfurled his wings and beat them once, twice and it was only then that Hermione noticed what was wrong, why his flight had been so uncoordinated. She clenched her jaw. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to fly. It was that he couldn’t. All but one of his flight feathers had been ripped out. Zìháo made a noise of distress folding his wings away in a rustle of feathers as if ashamed, and Hermione launched herself at him, her father’s awed expression, and indeed presence in the room, completely forgotten. 

Her arms went around his neck, her face pressed to the underside of his beak as she began to cry. “I’m so sorry Zìháo,” She hissed, her voice cracking in all the wrong places for parseltongue, “I’m so so sorry this happened to you.” 

“It is not your fault little speaker. Calm yourself. When I moult in autumn for my winter colours my feathers will grow back.” His revelation had the opposite effect than what had been intended. 

“You mean to tell me,” hissed Hermione coldly, her magic whipping around angrily inside her until she felt like something was going to break, “That those sick, twisted, loathsome little flobberworms at the shop could have just waited a few months and had feathers aplenty to sell without ripping them out?” Zìháo let out a shriek of rage. 

“Yes.” 

“We’ll get them Zìháo. I promise. Me and Tom have a revenge list, and they’re all going on it. Every last person who took a feather.” 

_“We have a revenge list?”_ Tom enquired, his thought echoing with amusement. 

_“We do now.”_ Replied Hermione grimly.

* * *

**‘ADULT OCCAMY LOOSE IN THE SYDE WAYS SHOPPING DISTRICT’** screamed the Daily Profit headline. **'Yes dear readers, there is a monster lurking in the heart of one of London's finest magical districts. A carnivorous feathered menace stalks our streets.'**

Rita Skeeter grinned and sat back, taking another sip of her morning coffee and enjoying the sweet, sweet taste of victory. A story like this had been well worth her little trip down to that blasted shop full of creatures, even if she had been stalked by a couple of the cats in her beetle form. Something as juicy as a disappearing dangerous beast deserved only the best reporter the daily profit had, and everyone knew it was her no matter what they whispered behind their foul pureblooded hands about her in the break room. Jennings would be utterly sick knowing she’d made the front page again. He’d been bitter since their school days about Skeeter, resident mudblood of Slytherin and general menace, and she knew that even now it would rankle that she had bested him yet again.

The occamy had disappeared completely too, and what Rita really wanted to know what where the bloody thing had got to. Occamies were wild, but it hadn’t been wreaking havoc at all since its escape. It was all so deliciously uncertain. Rita would have to do some research, that was for sure, or perhaps some creative guesswork. A shadowy figure began to take shape in her mind as she thought about it, tall and wearing a hooded cloak as he slunk through the night, the missing occamy curling around his shoulders like an XXXX classed scarf. A foreign parselmouth perhaps. What a follow up article that would be. Yes, that would whip the public into a nice little frenzy. This was going to be so much fun. Snapping her fingers for her quick quotes quill, she pulled out a small notebook and began to dictate her ideas. 


	13. The Hogwarts Express

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Tom have an eventful train ride.

Hermione had packed, unpacked and repacked her trunk. She had changed her mind twice about what to read on the train. She had woken up at four in the morning every day for the past week, too excited to sleep. It was finally here. September 1st. She was going to Hogwarts. At Tom's insistence she had put her hair into four tight plaits the night before while it was wet, and now it was hanging in slightly more controlled corkscrews than normal. As long as it didn't rain on the way it might even stay that way. She and Blaise had arranged to meet on the train along with a few of his other friends (much to Tom's exasperation), and Zìháo was curled up inside the cauldron in her trunk. She was as ready as she could possibly be, but her stomach felt like a pit of vipers. 

What if Blaise's friends didn't like her? What if Dumbledore confiscated the diary? What if Professor McGonagall told everyone she could speak to snakes? What if no one liked her? Tom was a steadying presence, as always, pushing a sense of calm through her mind and reminding her that it was not actually life or death. It was a train ride. Everything was going to be fine. It didn't quite stop the pit-of-vipers feeling but it calmed the vipers down, Hermione feeling significantly less like she was about to throw up as a result. Time seemed to move in skips and jumps, seconds taking an eternity to pass and then whole hours hurrying by in the blink of an eye. Her parents fussed and reminded her to write and ended up getting her to the station a whole two hours before the train was going to leave. Then there was nothing to do but choose a compartment and wait.

Hermione would forever be baffled by how close some people were willing to get to missing trains. Her parents had drummed it into her that it was always important to leave enough time that you could be seated on a train at least half an hour before it set off, just in case there were delays getting to the station. Magical families evidently didn't subscribe to the same notion. _"It's probably because they can travel so fast. Apparition and floo both take a matter of seconds."_ Suggested Tom. Hermione thought he was probably right, but she still couldn't help but feel anxious on behalf of the late comers. After another frantic half hour of hustle and bustle the train whistle sounded and at long last they were on their way. 

A sweaty, uncomfortable boy about her own age poked his head around the door to her compartment not five minutes after the train had pulled out of the station, and Hermione quirked an eyebrow. "Um, h-have you seen a toad anywhere, uh, um anywhere around h-here?" He asked. Tom’s disgust rolled through Hermione like a storm, but she pushed it to one side. She wouldn't alienate the poor boy yet.

"No, but I could summon him for you if you like. What's your name? I need it for the spell." Hermione said all of this very quickly, and after a short pause when the boy stood there blinking uselessly he smiled.

"Neville Longbottom, what's y-yours?"

"Hermione Granger." She said primly, trying to remember if Longbottom was a name she should know. Tom hadn't known anyone by that name at school at least, but you never knew. “A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.” She said, fairly certain she’d managed to keep the distain mostly out of her voice, “Now, to business. Accio Neville Longbottom's toad." After a minute or two a toad (ugly and slimy, now that Hermione gave it a second thought, why would anybody want one of those?) came zooming through the air towards them and Neville caught the thing in both hands. Hermione was suddenly very glad that Zìháo was safely inside her trunk rather than wrapped around her arm as he so often was. It wouldn’t do for him to eat another student’s familiar, no matter how gross, and she didn’t honestly know if she could have stopped him without revealing that she was a parselmouth.

Unfortunately Neville Longbottom did not seem to want to leave her peaceful little compartment, no doubt on account of not having friends to meet. Instead he trapped Hermione in a polite conversation, the topic of which ranged from worries about school (mind numbing) to herbology (mildly interesting). Eventually Hermione realised that finding Blaise was the perfect excuse to leave, wondering why Tom, who had been distracting Hermione with a running spiteful commentary about Longbottom since he first poked his head around the door, had not suggested it himself. She wasted no further time with the perpetually clammy boy, floating her trunk down from the luggage rack with a beckoning gesture that left the little fool open mouthed with awe. 

She passed a compartment full of what could only be Ravenclaws, who appeared to be having some kind of debate, three that contained couples and one containing two identical redheads, a spider the size of a cat and a laughing black boy with dreadlocks. It seemed strange, to Hermione at least, that she hadn’t passed any compartments where people were actually doing magic. _“Was there a rule I don’t remember about magic on the train?”_ She asked Tom suddenly, a possible explanation having occurred to her. 

_“Not in my day at least. Perhaps they’re more concerned with catching up with all of their little friends.”_ Replied Tom snidely. Hermione’s lips twitched. It was absurd, they should be taking the time to brush up on their casting or at least review the year’s textbooks. _“Oh? Then why are we looking for Blaise?”_ Asked Tom innocently, catching some of what she was thinking. 

_“To get away from Longbottom mostly,”_ Thought Hermione back. 

Tom laughed, taking enough control of their body to shudder dramatically before fading back into the recesses of Hermione’s mind. Hermione shook her head at her friend’s incessant need for dramatics and refocussed on her surroundings.Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted another redhead waving a wand. _“Salazar, I’m sure there were never this many in my day. It’s a veritable plague.”_ Tom interjected, and Hermione worked to suppress a laugh. There were an awful lot of gingers on the train. This one was seated with a boy who looked so like the press photos she’d seen of James Potter that he had to be the boy who lived, and Hermione felt Tom zero in on him intently. _“Let’s go in.”_ he suggested, echoing her own thoughts on the matter. 

She knocked on the door just as the redhead waved his wand again, though nothing seemed to be happening. 

“Are you doing magic? Let’s see then.” She said. The boys exchanged a glance that Hermione pretended not to see, her heart sinking. It was _not_ going to turn out just like primary school. 

“Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow.” Said the redhead. The box around the rat’s head flew off, and Hermione was honestly surprised even that had happened. Tom burst out laughing inside her mind. _“And I thought your peer group could sink no lower.”_ He said derisively. Hermione agreed, but she couldn’t very well say that. 

“That’s not a real spell.” She said between giggles, unable to contain her laughter despite her best efforts. “If you want to turn the rat yellow you should use the colour change charm.” 

The redhead muttered something that sounded like “ugh, the twins,” as Hermione bit the inside of her cheek and did her best to calm down. 

“This wouldn’t be the same set of twins with the spider a few carriages down, would it?” She asked. As soon as she said the word spider the redhead went terribly pale, and Tom hummed contemplatively inside her mind. 

“Probably. Red hair, hanging out with a boy with dreds?” Asked the boy, and Hermione nodded. “Yeah, they’re my brothers. Don’t trust anything they say or do, they’re practical jokers.” 

“Noted.” Said Hermione seriously, “Um, just out of interest, why did you want to turn your rat yellow in the first place?” 

“He’s a bit pathetic as familiars go,” Said the boy glumly, “I wanted to make him a bit more interesting.” Hermione nodded understandingly as Tom scoffed inside her head. 

“Would you like to learn the real colour charm?” She offered, managing to avoid sounding too condescending only by blocking Tom’s thoughts out as best she could. 

“I’m Hermione Granger by the way,” She said once the ginger’s rat had been turned a violent shade of yellow. Hermione had succeeded in teaching the boy the spell with a little effort, and the rat had turned a much more vivid shade than Hermione had been prepared for. It reminded her of a highlighter, but she suspected that the comparison might be lost on the boy, who was almost painfully wizarding. 

“Ron Weasley,” Said the redhead, well pleased by his victory with the colour charm. Hermione turned towards probably-Harry-Potter with a polite smile, and he took the prompt without her having to actually ask. _“Perceptive. Especially to body language. I wonder why.”_ Mused Tom as the small boy offered her another shy smile. 

“I’m Harry, Harry Potter.” He said quietly, and Hermione was thrown.

He seemed shy, almost worried about her reaction, and nothing like what she and Tom had predicted he would be. It was disconcerting. Then she took in what he was wearing. They had expected the boy who lived to be wearing wizard’s robes at least, and probably horribly opulent ones at that, but he was wearing a muggle t-shirt so oversized he could probably use it as a small tent, battered jeans held up with string and trainers that had seen better days. Even his glasses were sellotaped together. 

_“He’s being mistreated by someone.”_ Said Tom, far too gleefully for comfort. Tom was never wrong of course, but even without his help Hermione would have drawn the same obvious conclusions. The real question was, to what end? Surely, surely the wizarding world hadn’t left their saviour with abusive muggles by accident. _“They definitely didn’t,”_ Thought Tom with an unrestrained cheer that Hermione thought was honestly a bit disturbing, but decided not to comment on, “ _It means he’ll be much easier to manipulate. Unfortunate, then, for whoever planned this that we’re here first.”_ Hermione fought a contemplative look, wondering who exactly they had beaten to Harry Potter’s vulnerable points, but Tom wasn’t finished yet. _“He’ll either gravitate towards friends who provide protection or strike out on his own. If he chooses the first, we need to be that person for him. If he chooses the second we can offer to tutor him. This is going to be so much fun.”_ Hermione ignored Tom’s machiavellian analysis for the moment, smiling brightly and pulled out her wand.

“Would you like me to fix your glasses Harry?” She asked. His eyes went wide and he nodded quickly. 

_“Looks like option one so far.”_ Thought Tom, and Hermione did her best not to roll her eyes at her best friend. 

“Occulus Reparo.” She said, making sure to annunciate the words. With a flick of her wand the glasses were restored, but she was no longer paying attention to that. Her magic was warm, flickering across Harry’s face and sparking against his own. It filled Hermione’s mouth with the burnt-sweet flavour of Tom’s favourite spells, extended towards her almost longingly, as if they’d met a long time ago and forgotten. Tom could feel it too, pressing forwards to try and figure out what it was about the famous Boy Who Lived that seemed so utterly familiar. 

“Thanks.” Said Harry enthusiastically, breaking Hermione’s concentration and looking for all the world as if he hadn’t felt the odd combining of their magics. “That was really cool of you, do you know much magic already?” Perhaps he hadn’t felt it. Once Hermione was no longer focused on it the feeling faded away to a faint pulsing reminder, and it might be easy to ignore if he was concentrating on something else. 

“Of course, how could I not?” Hermione began, but just as she did Blaise poked his head around the door. After casting a judgemental eye over the mountain of sweet wrappers in the room he grinned and stepped inside, followed by a pale boy with dark brown hair and eyes of an oddly washed out blue. 

“Granger.” said Blaise in a cold tone, and Hermione rolled her eyes. 

“Zabini.” She replied, equally frosty. It lasted about another five seconds before they were both laughing and Hermione stood up to hug her friend, ignoring Tom’s grumbling. Behind her Weasley make a kind of choking noise, but she couldn’t find it within herself to wonder why. “I think introductions are in order. This is Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.” Blaise eyed the boy who lived contemplatively. 

“A pleasure. I can understand why you didn’t end up finding our compartment.” He said easily, and Hermione smiled. “This is Theo Nott, I couldn’t get rid of him.” Hermione frowned at the surname. She was sure she’d read it somewhere, but it hadn’t clicked immediately. _“He looks somewhat familiar too. Perhaps I met one of his grandparents at some point.”_ Thought Tom, coming towards the forefront of her mind as he tried to place Theo’s facial features. Apparently-Theo blinked slowly at her. 

“So you’re the famous Hermione Granger. I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

“How disconcerting, Blaise, what have you been telling him?” Replied Hermione easily. 

“Only good things, I assure you.” Said Blaise with a wide grin. “Of course, we’ve all heard about _you_ Mr Potter.” Harry looked uncomfortable at that, which Ron seemed to pick up enough to find his voice again. 

“Yeah? He’s not the only one Zabini.” Said Ron, putting an odd emphasis on Blaise’s last name. Blaise only grinned. “I would imagine not.” 

“So is it true you can already cast the summoning charm?” Asked Nott suddenly, completely ignoring whatever posturing Ron and Blaise were focussed on in favour of staring at Hermione unblinkingly. “A boy down the train said you did, and Blaise seemed ready to believe it.” 

“Yes,” Said Hermione. “It’s one of the single most useful daily charms, why wouldn’t I learn it?” 

“Because it’s fourth year material.” He said flatly. 

“Ah, but you mustn’t underestimate Hermione.” Said Blaise with a lazy grin, “You wouldn’t survive it.” Ron jumped at that, Hermione shooting him a quizzical look he didn’t acknowledge. 

“What about you then?” Said Hermione quickly. “Everyone. What’s the coolest bit of accidental magic you’ve ever done?” Blaise hummed and asked to have some time to think, so it was Theo who answered first. 

“I shattered all the windows in the parlour once.” He said, and there was a hint of pride in his voice as he confessed. It was the first emotion Hermione had noticed him displaying. There was something a bit odd about Theo, but then again he wasn’t the only one, she thought ruefully. Whatever it was, Hermione thought she could top it. No one else here had a friend who lived in their head part time and spent the rest as a diary. 

“I set a boa constrictor on my cousin once, at the zoo. I made the glass disappear so it escaped.” Piped up Harry. Hermione beamed at him. 

“I’d have done the same Harry, keeping animals captive for entertainment purposes is vile.” She said, and Blaise began to laugh. 

“Let alone potions ingredients, right Hermione?” 

“Exactly.” She said, with perhaps more force than she needed to. 

The door slid open again not long after Blaise, Theo and Ron had begun a heated debate about something called Quidditch. What exactly Quidditch was Hermione didn’t know, as Tom didn’t bother to explain beyond his rather condescending thought _“It’s a useless sport invented for lesser minds to give them something to feel good about themselves for.”_ Before she could ask out loud they had been interrupted.

“Is it true?” Said a pale boy, his voice almost dripping superiority, “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter is in this compartment.” 

“Oh, no hello for an old friend Draco?” Asked Theo flatly. Draco spun around to face him, a look of snotty surprise and something like jealousy on his face. 

“Theo?” He asked stupidly. 

Tom sneered inside Hermione’s mind. _“That,”_ He thought derisively, _“Can only be Draco Malfoy. He’s even more of a fool than his father and not nearly as dangerous. The whole bloodline’s ruined, I don’t know what happened to Abraxas that he ended up producing such weaklings.”_

_“That reminds me,”_ Returned Hermione, _“We have revenge to plot. We do have a list now after all.”_ She and Tom fell into a debate about how best to get back at Lucius Malfoy, and Hermione must have missed more than just the introductions, because when she blinked herself back into paying attention to her actual surroundings, Ron had drawn his wand valiantly against Malfoy and seemed about to explode with anger. Blaise just looked amused. At that point Ron’s now luminously yellow rat leapt at Malfoy with a hiss, who shrieked and left the compartment at what Hermione decided was definitely a run. Harry and Ron joined the other boys in their laughter, leaving Hermione to raise a nonplussed eyebrow at their antics. It hadn’t been _that_ funny. 

The rest of the train ride was spent in much the same fashion until Hermione happened to mention chess, at which both Ron and Theo perked up. Ron pulled out a board and Hermione sat back to watch the four boys become slightly more comfortable around each other. Whatever reservations Ron had about Blaise and Theo all but disappeared once he had crushed both of them in chess. Hermione wouldn’t have minded a game with him herself, but Tom resolutely refused to be distracted from their plan. He was completely determined to win Harry Potter’s loyalty, and Hermione was swept along for the ride. It was a pity they couldn’t swap places properly, but they had decided early on that it was too dangerous to have red eyes (they had discovered that Lord Voldemort was very well known for it during the war) so Hermione had to do most of the legwork while Tom sat back and analysed Harry’s responses. They had enough common ground to work with, muggle upbringing, a strong dislike of all things Malfoy and a liking for snakes, so Hermione found herself actually enjoying the company for once, even if Harry was more than a little poorly informed. 

Before they knew it the announcement had come that they were half an hour from Hogwarts, and there was a scramble for trunks and school robes by all four boys, none of whom had had the foresight to wear their robes to the station. “Uh, Hermione?” Said Blaise, and Hermione raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah?” 

“Could you, you know, leave for a minute so we could change?” Hermione went red and left without another word. _“I think the journey went rather well on the whole.”_ Thought Tom with deep satisfaction, kindly ignoring Hermione’s current embarrassment. _“Harry Potter is a valuable ‘friend’ to have met on the train.”_

_“You have a Harry Potter fixation Tom.”_ Said Hermione with a sage shake of her head, _“You’d get us landed in Gryffindor if you thought it’d give us more leverage over him.”_

_“I don’t think even I would put us through that hell.”_ Retorted Tom, _“And besides, we’ll be sorted before he is.”_ Hermione burst out laughing. 

Soon enough the train was slowing down and they were disembarking, Hermione practically fizzing with excitement as they did. Tom was holding their breath, as if he didn’t dare disrupt the air around them for fear it was a dream. Then they turned a corner and the castle loomed before them.Hermione’s first glimpse of the real Hogwarts was everything Tom had promised it would be. For all that Hermione had grown used to magic over the years, it still had the power to amaze her. Every window was lit from the narrow ones she knew from exploring Tom’s memories lit the tower stairwells to the wide Slytherin common room ones below the surface of the lake that glimmered up to meet them in a mess of refracted light. Tom stayed uncharacteristically quiet during the lake crossing, but as they reached the pebbled shore he crept back into her awareness. Their heart raced as they took in everything that had changed since he was last here, and everything that hadn’t, every beat thudding with the knowledge that they were here at last. They had come home, and the castle’s magic was singing a greeting in their bones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here it is, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I was planning to get to the sorting in this chapter but things kept happening and the word count ran away with me!! We're finally at Hogwarts and it's going to be SO much fun! 
> 
> Next update might be Saturday, because I don't have wifi right now (I'm posting this on data) but if I fond some it might be sooner! Either way, see you in hell x 
> 
> Frumion.


	14. Point 3 Subsection 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sorting ceremony

Chatter and laughter saturated the air of the great hall, the huge room Hermione had always thought of as echoing and lonely becoming almost cosy as they and the other first years filed in. Tom had vacillated between staying in the diary and looking around at the familiar sights of the castle on the journey to the great hall, but as they approached the sorting hat he slithered out of Hermione’s head entirely. She had known he was going to, after all the Sorting Hat might tell Dumbledore about him if he stayed with her during the sorting, but it was one thing to know what was happening and another to find herself chillingly, utterly alone. The sorting was somehow a much more scary prospect when she wasn’t facing it with Tom by her side. The diary emitted a warm glow in her pocket and Hermione put a hand on the spine, drawing as much comfort as she could from the silent show of support. 

The sorting began, the list of names blurring in Hermione’s mind until Professor McGonagall was calling out her own. Hermione stepped forwards on trembling legs, her mind spinning with the millions of ways her sorting could go wrong, and sat down on the stool. Well, she thought as she did so, it might have been more accurate to say she collapsed onto it. She managed a small smile at the thought, her mind ringing with silence as Tom’s laughter failed to join her own, and then Professor McGonagall lowered the Sorting Hat onto her head. 

_“Well well well,”_ Came a new voice, and Hermione jumped a little. It was elderly, almost crotchety and rough around the edges, so unlike her own or Tom’s that it made her start a little. _“What have we here?”_

_“Sorting Hat?”_ Hermione thought tentatively, _“I’d like Slytherin if you take that sort of thing into consideration.”_

_“Your head is veritably crammed with information child, I can hardly believe you’re a mere eleven.Knowledge of spells beyond anything expected of one your age, a custom made Gregorovitch wand, ritual magic in your memories and my, what’s this? Tom Riddle? A diary? You offered to share your mind? You aren’t alone in here usually, are you Miss Granger?”_ Before she had the chance to reply Hermione felt a strange pulling in her chest and then Tom’s presence was twisting through her mind once more. 

_“Hermione?”_ He asked, wrapping their magic around them defensively. 

_“Ah, young Mr Riddle,”_ Came the voice of the Hat. _“You’ve done some growing up I see, and how is your plan for world domination going?”_

_“What’s it to you, Hat? Thinking of reporting me to Dumbledore? I hear he’s headmaster now.”_ Replied Tom, and Hermione bit the inside of her lip. They needed to stay on the Hat’s good side, and Tom seemed to be actively making an enemy of it. 

_“I am bound to the school, not the headmaster Mr Riddle. Your secrets are safe with me, as they were the last time we spoke.”_

_“Sorry, but could we please get on with the sorting?”_ Interrupted Hermione, _“You were thinking of Slytherin?”_ She prompted. Laughter rang around her skull at that, the Hat’s amusement slightly worrying. 

_“A valiant try Miss Granger, but I’m afraid I can’t sort the two of you into Slytherin. You’re not eligible for that house.”_

_“What?”_ Hissed Hermione, and Tom shifted mutinously inside her mind, coiling their magic more tightly around them, no doubt in preparation to do something rash. 

_“Point 3 subsection 14 of the sorting code I’m afraid.”_ Said the Hat almost sorrowfully, his tone throwing both Tom and Hermione. _“Any reincarnations, time travellers or otherwise displaced minds who have been sorted before are not eligible for their original house. You can’t be sorted into Slytherin twice, no matter how much you might fit in there, or change it for the better.”_

_“That’s fascinating,”_ Began Hermione, unable to help herself, _“How frequently do you get time travellers? I can’t believe you literally just confirmed the reincarnation theory of the afterlife as true, is that common knowledge in the wizarding world? How would you define the soul, and do you have one as a sentient mind? Did you start life as a wizard like Tom did?”_ The Hat’s laughter echoed through her mind once more. 

_“Well that gives me my answer doesn’t it Miss Granger, Mr Riddle? I did suggest it to you last time as well you know, you’d have done well there the first time round. Yes yes, the two of you will do great things in—”_

“Ravenclaw.” He finished, yelling the last word to the room. 

_“Wait, you can’t just—”_ Hermione began, but Professor McGonagall lifted the Hat off her head before she could get the answers she wanted. _“That stupid, stupid piece of cloth.”_ Fumed Hermione as she headed towards the Ravenclaw table, too angry to think of a better insult. _“Do you think it’s flammable? No, we need answers from it first. I wonder if legilimency would work.”_

_“Well you’d have to learn it first, and as the Sorting Hat doesn’t have eyes I don’t actually know if it would.”_ Replied Tom as they sat down. _“I wonder if the Hat is something like me. It would certainly be a surprise if it were.”_ Before Hermione could ask what he meant by that, Theo was stepping up to the Hat with a worried look and Hermione refocussed on the sorting. 

“Slytherin.” shouted the Sorting Hat after a moment’s pause, and Hermione clapped loudly as Theo remerged from beneath it. Hermione shot him a wide smile and he grinned back before coming to sit down almost parallel to her at the Slytherin table. 

“Well done.” She said quietly once he had settled himself, and he grinned.

“Thanks. How are you feeling about Ravenclaw? You spent ages under the hat, were you arguing with it or something?” 

“The Sorting Hat did what it thought best I suppose.” Replied Hermione noncommittally. “I’m happy with Ravenclaw.” After that the sorting passed in a blur, Harry and Ron both getting Gryffindor to rather obnoxious cheering from Ron’s older brothers, and Blaise joining Theo in Slytherin at the very end. 

The meal was extravagant, but Hermione, along with most of the Ravenclaw first years it would seem, was more interested in introducing herself and asking about the others to pay much attention to her food. If Tom hadn’t prompted her to eat, she was certain she would have forgotten entirely. There were nine other Ravenclaw first years, all of whom seemed nice enough, if a little immature. Hermione was half way through both a dessert of apple crumble and an argument about the merits of transfiguration verses charms for changing the colour of something when Dumbledore stood up at the head table and smiled benignly down at them all. Hermione shivered, looking slightly away to make sure the headmaster couldn’t read her thoughts. Tom had warned her all about his old transfiguration professor’s bias against him, and she didn’t want to put Tom inany danger. His speech began much like any Hermione might have expected, a general welcome to the school and a warning away from the forest, but then things got strange. 

“—and finally I must tell you that this year, the third floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to anyone who does not with to die a most painful death.” Tom pushed forward until Hermione could barely keep her eyes from shifting, his curiosity mingling with hers as he did so. _“That’s new. I wonder what he's hiding in there.”_ He thought. All down the Ravenclaw table the sentiment of his words was being echoed by the older students, and in the hubbub of questions Hermione chanced a look at the headmaster. He seemed frail with a kindly smile and long white beard oddly reminiscent of Gandalf from Lord Of The Rings, but Hermione knew that he could be harsh and unforgiving. After all, she’d seen Tom’s memories of their first meeting and worse, his refusal to allow muggleborns to escape the Blitz by staying at Hogwarts over the summer. He had to have an ulterior motive of some kind. 

“I’m Rashid Patil and this is Penelope Clearwater.” Said an older boy when Dumbledore’s dire warnings were over and they had been directed to their common rooms, indicating himself and a girl the same age who appeared to have been tasked with corralling the first year Ravenclaws. “As your fifth year prefects we will handle any concerns you have that you don’t wish to take to a teacher, though as it is our OWL year we might refer you to our sixth year counterparts. Please follow us.” 

“Is that your brother?” One of the boys asked Padma Patil, the loud and friendly girl Hermione had been arguing with earlier about charms. 

“No, he’s my cousin.” She said, shooting a grin in his direction as she spoke. Rashid winked, slowing his pace a little to talk to Padma.

“What about Parvati then?” He asked with a conspiratorial air, “That was quite the surprise sorting, who’d have thought she’d end up a lion? I’d have put money on both of you being ravens for sure.” 

“Do Hogwarts houses often run in families?” Hermione asked the other prefect, unable to help herself. Penelope smiled at her. 

“I’m guessing from your question that you’re a muggleborn?” Hermione nodded warily, slipping her wand out of her sleeve just in case the older girl turned out to be a blood supremacist. Something of her mistrust must have shown in her face, because Penelope was quick to reassure her. “Not that I have a problem with it! I am one too, I just wanted to make sure I explained it using terminology you understand.” She said with a conspiratorial grin, “Purebloods tend to get confused when you mention psychology to them.” Hermione grinned back, and even Tom could see the funny side when the older girl put it like that, their shared mirth mingling in Hermione’s mind. 

“So,” Prompted Hermione, “Houses and families.” 

“Hogwarts houses depend on what you value as a person, yeah?” Hermione nodded, doing her level best to avoid rolling her eyes at the obviously simplified explanation, “It's fairly normal to see whole families in one house, because of course they all grow up with the same values. Take the Weasleys, the oldest one and the current fifth year could both easily have been Ravenclaw, they certainly don't lack the brains, but they were raised to value bravery, so they went to Gryffindor. All Weasleys do. It's the same with lots of other pureblood families like the Patils, or at least it was until this year in their case I suppose.” 

As the older girl explained they entered what had to be Ravenclaw tower, but to Hermione’s surprise they didn't go straight through the doors on the opposite side of the set of stairs. Instead they began to climb, the wide marble stairs that encircled the outer edge of the tower lit beautifully by a flotilla of enchanted candles. They passed six more doors and finally, finally reached the eagle door knocker Hermione knew would allow them entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. Unlike the Slytherin dungeons’ tight secrecy and ever changing passwords, Ravenclaw tower was open to anyone who could answer the riddle posed by the door-knocker. Tom had spent a fair bit of time there studying during exam seasons, so Hermione knew exactly what was going to happen next. True to form, the eagle opened its beak. “Where does a circle begin.” It asked. While Rashid explained how they were supposed to enter the common room Hermione fell into considering the puzzle. 

Tom suggested just using the obvious answer, which was of course, that a circle began at its beginning, but Hermione disliked being forced to use circular logic. Even if it would grant them access to the common room beyond, there had to be a better answer. Her mind flitted briefly to circle theorems, but they wouldn’t help her now. Then it hit her. The equation of a circle depended on two things, the centre point and the radius. Once you had those you could draw a circle and do all sort of calculations on it. That was the answer. “At it’s centre point.” She murmured, then, when the gaggle of first years and prefects turned towards her she continued more strongly. “A circle begins at it’s centre point. A circle has no beginning or end point, so the question has to refer to how one would begin finding things out about it. The centre point of a circle is key to finding its mathematical equation, hence the centre point is the beginning.” Everyone was staring at her now, and in the end it was the eagle knocker itself that broke the silence that followed her garbled explanation. 

“A worthy answer.” 

The door swung open to reveal the beautiful room Hermione recognised from Tom’s memory. High arching windows looked out into the empty blackness of the cloudy night sky, draped with royal blue curtains of a heavy silk embroidered with bronze birds in flight. The ceiling too was glass, but through that the stars seemed to be visible, so there must be some kind of enchantment in place that allowed people in the tower to see through the clouds. Between every other window there was a blackboard with a different subject inscribed across the top, each with an interesting fact written in the space below and a list of books you could find that would tell you more about the fact. In the spaces without blackboards bookshelves burst with extracurricular books on everything from the arithmancy behind gobstones games to the possible existence of something called a heliopath.  There were a series of tables dotted across the room, half of which were painted with different board game set ups. There were muggle games like scrabble and nine-mens-morris, wizarding ones she didn’t recognise and of course, chess. Low rise bookshelves were spaced between the tables, and there were a smattering of blue armchairs collected around each of them. Other tables were drawn with runes for silence and what Hermione thought were basic ward lines that would prevent interruption if you wanted peace and quiet to study. It was, she thought giddily, probably what heaven would look like if it existed. 

It was only after drinking in the sight of her common room for a good minute or two and trying to remember if she had read anything about the potion-making properties of yarrow (the potions board had caught her attention) when she realised that the gaggle of first years was still staring at her, as were the prefects. She raised an eyebrow, and Padma smiled a little nervously before breaking the silence. “Um, Hermione right? Or do you prefer Granger?” Hermione physically felt Tom roll his eyes in her mind. 

“Hermione’s fine by me.” she replied, waiting as patiently as she could manage to for an actual explanation. 

“Hermione then. We wanted to know how you came up with the answer to the riddle.” 

“It’s only maths.” Said Hermione nonchalantly, “I’ve always liked riddles, but it seemed like the eagle wanted a more intelligent response than ‘at the beginning’, you know? This is Ravenclaw after all.” 

“Yeah,” Said one of the boys, Terry something-or-other Hermione thought, “But how did you know all that stuff? I’m muggleborn too and I sure as hell didn’t learn anything like that at primary school.” Hermione pinked a little. 

“I just pick stuff like that up easily. I like to read and maths can be lots of fun when you get into it. The equation of a circle is in some GCSE textbooks. I’m sure you could learn it if you want to.” Said Hermione, trying her best not to sound condescending. Penelope’s eyes went wide, and Tom groaned in her mind. _“I thought this was the house of the intelligent. It looks like we’re still going to only have each other for real company.”_

_“Tell me about it.”_ Thought Hermione. _“Still, they probably won’t tease us. They at least seem to want to learn something here, which is more that I could say for the other houses.”_

"Well," said Penelope, "You're definitely going to enjoy arithmancy in third year. Circle equations are one of the problems you get in the first term." 

After that the prefects seemed to remember that they did in fact have a job to do, and began directing the first years to their rooms, telling them to be back in the common room by seven thirty the following morning to meet their head of house. To Hermione’s delight, house Ravenclaw seemed to value privacy, as each year group had been allocated a whole floor of the tower beneath the common room that they could leave via its respective door into the staircase they had come up. They would also thankfully be getting their own rooms, something that Hermione had been worrying about. At least they wouldn't have to explain Zìháo to anyone. The first years had the floor closest to the common room, on account of having the most free time to spend there and the least need of the academic library in the main body of the school, so it was a short trip down the stairs concealed beneath the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw to reach their rooms. 

When they got to their floor, Hermione found the door with her name on it and went in without pausing to admire the comfortable blue sofas arranged around the stairs on their floor, or stopping to talk to any of her new housemates. They could think she was rude or stuck up if they wanted, but she was too tired to make any more friends today. Her room had a wide window through which the stars were visible despite definitely not having a wall that bordered the outside of the castle, but Hermione was too preoccupied to give it much thought. Her trunk had been left at the foot of a lovely, comfortable looking bed that had blue hangings and Hermione rushed over, wanting to make sure Zìháo had been okay while the truck had been moved to the castle. As soon as she opened the lid he poured out, growing as he did so and looking around. “This is it Zìháo, the new nest. Welcome home.” She hissed. 

After settling into her new room, lining the book case she had been given with her books, notebooks and other bits and pieces and making sure the door was locked, Hermione lay carefully down under the blue covers with the diary in one hand. Then she followed Tom through the back of her mind down to the diary, safe in the knowledge that Zìháo would be coiled around her and the book that contained her mind for the rest of the night, ready to slither to her defence if need be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts? I want them. Your Feelings? They feed the muse.


	15. Curious Likenesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Tom discover an important fact about Harry Potter, and Minerva McGonagall forgets one about Quirrell.

The start of term staff meetings were never too much fun for Minerva. After watching the sorting and making sure the Gryffindors (both new and old) wouldn’t cause too much havoc on their first night, the last thing she wanted to do was exchange pleasantries with her fellow teachers. They had already been back for a week prepping for the start of term, so it wasn’t as if this was their big reunion. Still, at least there would be some good scotch making its rounds tonight. She reached the staff room at the same time as Filius, who had no excuse to be late. Minerva knew her lions well enough to remind them of her presence immediately, if only to prevent a start of term party, but Filius preferred to give his Ravenclaws a night to settle in however they pleased. At her question he only smiled and revealed a bottle of goblin brewed gin. Minerva’s eyes went wide. Filius couldn’t always get it, but that drink had characterised more than a few of their wilder nights as young teachers, and then as older ones. Gods, where had the time gone, the years, the decades? It was strange sometimes, realising that she was not young anymore. Minerva never felt old, but the evidence was there in her decades of memories and in the faces of students who’s parents she had watched grow up. “Really Filius?” She asked. “It’s the start of term, we haven't even had to mark a set of essays yet.” 

“Believe me, this meeting will be a long one.” Said Filius dryly, “Best to have something to look forward to.” 

He turned out to be right. Albus seemed to want to talk about the sorting before they could get into the actually relevant minute they had to discuss about prefect rotors and where exactly they were going to find the time to breathe with the classes scheduled the way they were. Minerva would admit that two hat stalls in one year was unusual enough, but she had guessed Miss Granger would be a hat stall the moment she’d introduced her to the wizarding world. It was no surprise, then, that she had been. Minerva had been many things in her long life, but wrong was not often one of them. Potter stalling the hat was less expected, but Minerva well remembered the family Albus had insisted on placing him with, so perhaps it was not such a surprise that he hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps with an instant sorting. 

“Oh who cares why the hat stalled on _Potter_?” Snapped Severus, and Minerva winced slightly. He was going to be a problem this year, she knew. He’d never fully forgiven her for not stepping in about James and Sirius’ pranks. How likely was he to forgive Harry, when he looked the way he did, practically a double of James at the same age? Not, she thought, particularly likely. Minerva would have to keep an eye on that. 

“I agree Albus. It was just a sorting.” She said, cutting in before Albus had a chance to reply. “Miss Granger and Mr Potter will no doubt settle into their respective houses well enough, as has every hat stall before them. I think we should take the time to address how exactly I am supposed to work with the timetable you have given me. I have two Newt classes in the seventh year, not one, and they can’t afford any more independent study sessions. We do actually want them to pass their exams, no?” 

“Yes Albus,” Added Quirinus softly, “And Minerva’s not the only one with problems. I can barely find note’s about some years, and the entire process has left me worried about the fate of wizarding britian. There’s no consistency with what the different years learnt at what time in defence. I have the rising third years, who all seem worryingly competent with physical shields and rising fifth years who I can find no evidence for having learnt the same spell set. The whole of the defence syllabus is an appalling mess.” 

“I’m afraid it’s the curse my boy,” Said Albus, and Minerva tried not to grin as Quirinus’ eye twitched at the endearment. “The constant changing of teachers was bound to cause some minor issues.” 

“There’s minor issues Albus,” Said Quirinus with more patience than Minerva would have been able to manage, “And then there’s having a curriculum that reenforces multi-generational incompetence.” Minerva managed to turn her smile into an expression of disapproval, but Quirinus’ gaze was knowing when it met hers. 

The meeting went on for far longer than even Filius had been expecting, but eventually Minerva found herself walking arm in arm with her old school friend to the seventh floor as was their tradition. Unusually however, they were joined by Quirinus. She and Filius had been best friends since his first year (and her second), and they had by now endured decades of teasing about the amount of time they spent together, but they’d always been happy enough in only each other’s company. Transfiguration mad Minnie and her duelling mad half-goblin best friend from the year below. It had always been just the two of them against the world, on nights like this. 

No, she realised as they made it to the doorway of their private room, the one with the giant chess set they’d transfigured as a joke in her last year, just to see if they could. She, Filius and Riddle had joined forces briefly that year to organise a school wide chess tournament, with the final game to be played out across her life size board. Then there had been Korzibsky while he was teaching, but he’d only stayed a few years while Durmstrang’s headmaster had been out for his blood, and in seventy nine they’d invited Prewett, but he had fallen ill towards the end of the year and decided not to come back, on account of the curse on the defence post. Still, it was a rare enough occurrence that the room contained only two chairs as they walked in. Quirinus tapped one of the floorboards with his wand and it grew into a third chair as Filius summoned three glasses and cracked open his Gin. Tonight, they would forget about the tight schedules and too-small first year classes full of war orphans (though, thought Minerva somewhat apprehensively, this would be the last of the small year groups) and have fun. A few drinks in, and Filius had challenged Quirinus to a chess game. He accepted with an easy grin, which gave Minerva slight pause. She shook it off and refilled her glass, thinking nothing more of it. Perhaps if she’d had less to drink, she would have remembered why it seemed so odd. Quirinus Quirrell had always _despised_ chess. 

* * *

Hermione loved the early mornings. The world was quiet then, and she could pretend it was all hers. She drifted out of the diary to watch the sunrise with Tom, who had missed so many inside the diary that Hermione felt he was practically owed beautiful ones by the world. They certainly seemed more bright than they had before she shared them with Tom. Their window was an interesting little spell. Hermione had cast an ancient greek spell that would reveal what spells wereat work on a room, and found something she didn’t fully understand. The widow was an arithmantic knot, curling trails of magic binding the area of space it occupied to somewhere else (presumably the stretch of the castle that actually had this view of things) but Hermione didn’t even begin to understand how it had been cast. Tom didn’t either, and it was immediately added to their to-be-researched list. 

After listening to a speech by Filius Flitwick (apparently another school contempory of Tom, which was just as strange a thought as it had been when Tom brought it up with Professor McGonagall) they made their way down to the great hall alone, not thinking to wait for a guide. Tom realised their mistake as they slid into the great hall, but by then it was too late to do anything but act as if their prompt arrival was normal, so that was what they did. Neither Hermione nor Tom missed the speculative eyes pressing into them from the head table, but luckily at that moment a distraction arrived in the form of the first year Gryffindors and their accompanying explosion of noise.

“Er, Hermione?” Said Harry Potter, who had slid away from his year mates and over to the Ravenclaw table without Hermione noticing, and spoken form directly behind her. She felt Tom jolt slightly in her mind. She managed not to laugh at him, but amusement seeped through her mind despite her best efforts as she turned to face the object of Tom’s (not so) little obsession.

“Yes?” 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” 

“Of course Harry.” Said Hermione warmly, getting up and leading the way out of the great hall, scattered whispers from the lesser students rippling through the great hall as she did so, but she ignored them easily enough. It wouldn’t be the first time people had things to say about her behind her back. She took Harry to one of the secluded sets of spiral stairs Tom had discovered in his second year. The staircase she had chosen took one directly from the atrium to the charms classroom, no accident, as she had charms next and no matter how much Harry mattered to Tom, she wouldn’t risk being late to her very first class. Harry looked around with wide, brilliant green eyes and Tom shifted uncomfortably in her mind. Hermione thought she knew exactly why. Harry Potter saw Hogwarts as just as much of a refuge as Tom did. 

“I wanted to ask, er, didthesortinghatdoanythingweirdtoyou?”Said Harry once he’d finished marvelling over the intricately carved shortcut Hermione had shown him. 

“I’m sorry?” Asked Hermione, not quite clear on what that clump of words had been supposed to mean. She could physically feel Tom laughing in the privacy of their mind as she spoke, but did her best not to let their shared amusement show. 

“Er, did the sorting hat say or do anything, er, strange, to you? I was talking to Ron about it, but, er, the hat sorted him pretty quick, didn’t it?” Hermione nodded with a smile, and Harry visibly relaxed at the positive affirmation. Tom all but glowed with emotion at that expression, but Hermione tried not to think about that too much.

“Anyway,” continued Harry, “He thought you might know more about what happened because you seemed to know lots on the train and, er you were under the hat for ages like I was, so you might have talked to it a bit more and I was just wondering…” Harry trailed off and Hermione felt another of Tom’s rushes of glee. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek, torn between discomfort and understanding. Whoever had raised Harry really had done a number on his self esteem and confidence, and she knew exactly what Tom was thinking. Part of her was thinking it too. They just had _so much_ potential to work with. 

The kinder part of Hermione felt bad for Tom’s obviously ecstatic response to Harry’s clear yearning for affirmation and friendship, but she knew she wasn’t much better. Harry was more than a person. He was a figurehead. If she and Tom were going to change the world, they could have no better starting point than as a very public close friend of Harry Potter. It was just the way things worked. It made Hermione feel vaguely nauseated to think about for too long, but part of her could see the benefits. They couldn’t mess this up. 

“The hat was a bit strange.” Hermione replied, her voice betraying none of how guilty she felt, “It rambled awfully before deciding on Ravenclaw for me, I think it must be quite lonely being a hat, stuck in a cupboard for most of the year.” 

At the word cupboard Harry started violently, and Tom rushed further forward, far enough that Hermione knew her eyes must have shifted slightly, but he was too curious right now to care. He extended a tendril of their magic towards Harry’s mind and Hermione caught a flash of accident-angry-pain-dark-small-dark-so-dark-so-cold-dark-cupboard-how-did-she-know? Tom withdrew from Harry’s mind with a flicker of discomfort and all but fled back into the depths of Hermione’s. He had used legilimency, which Hermione was still very jealous of, but it wasn’t fear of discovery that had sent him running. No, the inside of Harry’s mind must have reminded him far too closely of his years at the orphanage. He didn’t like to feel that helpless, Hermione knew, not even second hand. Never again, he had told her once, when the children were feeling particularly cruel one break time and Hermione had wanted to hide rather than fight back. Never again. 

“Oh,” Said Harry eventually, no doubt realising he hadn’t actually responded. “So it didn’t start talking about some weird code with you?” 

“What did it say to you?” She asked, her mind echoing with a vivid curiosity. It dawned on her then, that she didn’t know who’s it had been originally, her’s or Tom’s. She couldn’t tell. 

“It said something about a riddle I think, and then asked ‘Another one?’ like it was a question. Then there was something about waking me up, and my scar started burning and burning and then it sighed and said ‘Damn subsection fourteen, you’d do so well in Slytherin’ and then it sorted me into Gryffindor.” Said Harry, and Hermione’s eyes went wide.  “And now,” Harry continued when Hermione failed to respond, too wrapped up in her own thoughts to do so, “It’s like I already know my way around the castle, and things about some of the teachers. Like, McGonagall was head girl and I know what she looked like back then, and Flitwick is part Goblin. He was a duelling champion, but I didn’t read it anywhere or anything. I just know. It sounds insane, but I do. This set of stairs, it’ll take us straight up to charms, won’t it? It’s a teacher’s shortcut students aren't supposed to know about.” 

Harry wasn’t a time traveller, that much was clear, which meant he was either a reincarnation or an ‘otherwise displaced mind’. If Hermione hadn’t had any other information, she might have assumed he was a reincarnation, but she did. The hat had said something about a riddle, or, more likely, it had said something about Riddle, and Harry had misunderstood. It had also said he was ‘another one’. That left only one explanation. Harry was like the diary. He had Tom’s memories. No, not just Tom, she reminded herself with a slight shudder. Harry Potter, bastion of the light side, somehow had access to the memories of Lord Voldemort. _“I think it’s his scar. It must be a piece of me, or rather a piece of whoever I had become whenever it split off from the rest of me. He’s remembering things from my era at Hogwarts.”_ Tom thought at Hermione, and she nodded. 

_“I think so too. Well, I suppose that answers why our magic reacted how it did when he repaired his glasses. Should we tell him?”_

_“Not yet.”_

_“The longer we wait to tell him the more like a lie it will feel.”_ Thought Hermione anxiously. 

_“Perhaps we should offer his a version of the truth then. Something that could be explained away if he turns out to live in Dumbledore’s pockets but will give him enough to trust us more.”_ Suggested Tom. Hermione knew he was right, but he didn’t quite know if she could walk so fine a line. She was quite good at reading people now, at Tom’s insistence, but she didn’t know if she was that good.

_“How do I do that? It’s such a delicate plan, I’m not sure—”_

_“Leave that to me.”_ Said Tom with obvious glee. Hermione retreated into her mind more fully, watching what unfolded once Tom had taken the helm fully carefully to try and understand his methods. He was so sure of himself, when it came to befriending people, and Hermione envied it. 

“I have the same thing.” Said Tom quietly, looking down at Hermione’s hands as if confused. “I know where things are in the school, I didn't get at all lost going to the library before breakfast or anything, it’s like the information is already there inside my mind.” 

“What do you think it’s from?” Asked Harry, worrying at his lower lip. 

“I don’t know. I think it might be something to do with Salazar Slytherin.” Began Tom, and Hermione frowned in the safety of her own mind. Just where was her friend planning to go with this? 

“Salazar Slytherin? But neither of us are even in Slytherin. The hat said it couldn’t put me there!” Said Harry, unknowingly echoing her thoughts.

“I think maybe Slytherin wove some helpful parselmagic into the castle when it was built.” 

“Parselmagic?” 

“Magic done in the language of the snakes. Slytherin was a famous parselmouth, and I can speak to snakes too so I assumed it was to do with that. He would probably want to help people like him, parseltongue is a really rare gift.” 

“It is?” Asked Harry, his eyes huge, and Hermione felt Tom pull her body into a nod. “I thought lots of people in the wizarding world could do it. I can too! I think you’re right about this parselmagic stuff.” 

“Whatever it is Harry, we’ll figure it out.” Said Tom, putting Hermione’s hand on Harry’s shoulder and shuddering slightly as their magics entwined. Harry noticed it this time, his eyes going wide, and Hermione grinned. 

“I’d like that.” Said Harry softly, and Tom smiled widely at his words, gleeful elation swirling through Hermione as it echoed through their mind. His next words were hissed, and Hermione knew exactly why. It was meant to drive their meaning home. 

“You’re not alone anymore Harry.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, I was tragically busy with real life and it was oddly difficult to write. I kept switching perspective, changing my mind and having to switch back. I'm happy with it now at least! A lot of canon divergences begin here, mainly because my main man S.Hat is now a much more chaotic force than he was in canon. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it, and I'd love a comment or two if the mood strikes. They feed the muse. 
> 
> See ya in hell x


	16. The inner circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Tom make friends and discover enemies.

Their second lesson was potions, but Tom didn’t spare it too much thought as they made their way down through his beloved corridors to the dungeons. He had always been a dab hand at potions, he knew they would charm the teacher within if not minutes, the first few lessons, and he could brew first year potions in his sleep. Hermione herself was no slouch when it came to theory, and she would no doubt excel in the practical area due to her fine eye for detail and good memory. If there were any unfortunate accidents, Tom was well versed enough in ingredient reactions to counteract them. They shared the class with Hufflepuff, so there was no thought that their brewing would be sabotaged, and there was, Tom had been sure, no way the class could go wrong. Perhaps it was this overconfidence that made their arrival so very jarring for Hermione. 

As soon as they walked in he could feel the twisting magic pulsing in the teacher’s left arm, and it echoed through their mind too fast for him to conceal it from Hermione. The teacher was branded with _his_ magic. His mark was hidden by some sort of concealment spell, but that flimsy disguise couldn’t keep Tom Riddle, heir to Slytherin and first horcrux of Lord Voldemort, from sensing his own magic. Snape, whoever he was now, had once been one of Tom’s followers. 

When they had first come across descriptions of the dark mark, Tom had been quietly ecstatic, though he hid it well enough from Hermione. He had done it. He had marked his followers. He had invented the ritual that did it the year before he made his first horcrux, twisting the ancient rite of a coven’s loyalty bond into something stronger and darker, something where the power was imbalanced in his favour. Now it occurred to Tom that it had a secondary use. It would tell them who Hermione’s enemies were. Tom moved a little further into the forefront of their mind. If their teacher bore his mark, it meant Hermione wasn’t safe here. She was a brilliant, powerful and well taught mudblood about to show up every other student in the room. Tom remembered well how ugly the fallout of that might get, and now they knew for certain that the teacher would not welcome it. 

It was a mark of how distracted he was that Tom didn’t even think to conceal the flicker of horror that crossed Hermione’s face, or the fact that they were blatantly staring at the magic staining the man’s arm until it was too late. Hermione managed a smile closer to a grimace than anything even vaguely positive, and sat down at the back as far as she could physically get from the professor without leaving the classroom completely.Tom watched the careful, assessing glare that followed and shuddered at what it might promise. They could not afford another mistake like that.

It wasn’t as if he had revealed much more the first time he had met Dumbledore, and the slight slip in Tom’s mask had marred their entire relationship. He wasn’t willing to repeat that performance now, when one of _his_ marked followers was in the position of authority. A potions professor skilled enough to take the mark, the highest accolade for those who followed him (or so he had planned before the split) that was reserved only for the most loyal, was not something to be trifled with. Tom did not intend to trifle with him over anything more than coming top of the man’s class. He could only hope that would be enough to keep them from making an enemy.

Their potion came out perfect of course. Hermione had studied the theory to death, wanting to understand the hows and whys behind each step in the instructions before attempting any brewing. When they went up to the front to hand in their potion Tom had their magic coiled tightly around them, poised and ready for anything untoward than might occur. _“You’re paranoid Tom. Surely even a bigot wouldn’t hurt me in front of a room full of witnesses.”_ Pointed out Hermione, and Tom allowed himself to relax, even if it was only very slightly. Hermione did have a point, but that didn’t mean they were entirely out of danger. Tom didn’t relax completely until they had put two floors of the castle between themselves and Snape, but Hermione couldn’t appear to be fleeing too openly, so they hung back to wait for some of the others. He didn't like the way his follower’s eyes had tracked Hermione as they left the room, or any of his theories on why they might have done so. 

The gaggle of first year girls they had joined seemed to be comprised of Padma Patil, the mudblood Boot, and a couple of Hufflepuffs they didn’t know. “Are you ok Hermione?” Asked one of them, and Tom bit back his knee jerk suspicion at being known before introductions. The Ravenclaws had probably been gossiping. 

“Yes.” Hermione said, a steady smile in place. “Though I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.” She offered a hand and the girl took it with a cheerful smile. “I’m Hermione Granger.” 

“Susan Bones.” Tom perked up at that. The Bonses were a light family who had been prominent in the war. This little Susan was going to be a valuable friend. 

_“We’ll have to keep this one. Her family’s ministry connections could be very useful.”_ Hermione rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny it. “This is Hannah Abbott and Ernie McMillan.” She added, gesturing to the others, but Tom didn’t care to hear it. McMillan was a pureblood name, as was Abbott, but neither held the power of the Bones family. If playing nice with them endeared Hermione to little Susan they would do it, but they were not independently important. 

“A pleasure.” Said Hermione easily, offering one of Tom’s politely interested smiles. “What does the Hufflepuff common room look like?” Asked Hermione when no one else seemed to have anything else to offer the conversation. She already knew of course, Tom had made sure to learn every room in the castle while he was a student, but it payed to keep up appearances. They would appear to be nothing more than the consummate muggleborn Ravenclaw, brilliant, curious and wide eyed at the wonders of magic.

After lunch they had double transfiguration, and Minnie’s class turned out to be an absolute joy, if not for quite the reasons she intended. The classroom was utterly silent (a blessing, Tom had somehow forgotten yet again quite how noisy regular children could be. He blamed it on spending so much time with Hermione, who was by nature a far superior witch) Tom was also still trying to wrap his head around the fact that sharp, chess master seventh year Minnie McGonagall was in her late sixties now, which was bizarre enough on it’s own. Then there was the fact that she hadn’t gone professional with either transfiguration research or quidditch. She’s been mad about both at school, and he’d actually had a conversation with her on one of their prefect’s patrols during which she had denounced his dreams of becoming the defence professor. They were both destined for greater things, she’d said then. Where was his Slytherin ambition? Now the tables appeared to have turned completely, and Tom wanted desperately to know what had caused the change. She was clearly a talented teacher, but it didn’t make any sense. 

At the end of their second lesson, Hermione hung back when the bell went and simply asked, stunning Tom completely. He hadn’t realised he’d been mulling it over so loudly in their mind that Hermione would overhear. “Professor,” Said Hermione as they handed in her beetle-to-button transfiguration. It was laughably easy of course, so they had turned their button to ivory to pass the time and added a layer of swirling patterns to the top of it. “What made you want to take up teaching?” Professor McGonagall smiled slightly. 

“Yours was an exemplary button transfiguration Miss Granger. In fact, four points to Ravenclaw for creative flair as you’re still here. I became a teacher for multiple reasons, the foremost of which was my love for transfiguration. You are quite the talent at it yourself, I have to say.” Hermione beamed, but Tom had no more answers than he’d started with. _“She’s deflecting Hermione. You’re better than ‘quite the talent’, you’re a prodigy and we both know it. There’s something she doesn’t want to tell us.”_

_“Don’t worry Tom,”_ Thought Hermione seriously, _“I saw it too. She looked a little sad didn’t she, when I asked?”_ If she had, Hermione had been paying closer attention to her expression than Tom, but he was more than willing to believe her. “Thank you professor, that means a lot. I love transfiguration.” Hermione’s eyes were trained exactly on Minnie’s face as she continued, and this time Tom didn’t miss the flicker of melancholy that followed her words. “I think I’d like to do transfiguration research in the future, like your papers on the gamp laws!” Said Hermione enthusiastically, and really, Tom commended the performance. Like all good lies it was rooted in truth, Hermione had read and loved Minnie’s papers before the start of term, but it wasn't all the sentence had been meant to do. She was getting good at this, his little apprentice. 

“Didn’t you ever want to do that full time, instead of teaching?” Continued Hermione, and Tom gave her a mental round of applause. Hermione bit the inside of their mouth to stop herself from laughing externally as Minnie’s expression softened, something like regret appeared in her eyes. 

“I did Miss Granger, but sometimes our lives take turns we don’t expect them to.” She said, quietly. She looked for a moment as if she had been about to say more, but after a heartbeat of expectant silence she closed her eyes. Tom knew in that instant they had reached the end of the discussion. “But I believe we’ll be late for dinner if we hang about chatting Miss Granger. I’ll walk you to the great hall, it wouldn’t do for you to get lost.” 

“Is there a spell that maps out the castle professor?” Asked Hermione, and Tom tuned out the reply. There was, but it didn’t show nearly everything they knew about the castle and they hardly needed it. 

The first few days blurred into a pattern of going to class, performing the deathly simplistic magic with ease, impressing their teachers and trying (so far unsuccessfully, to Tom’s chagrin) to sneak into the restricted section. When he’d attended Hogwarts originally the librarian had been a waif like man who was mostly content to let people read what they liked as long as they did it quietly. Madam Pince, the current occupier of the post, was much more vigilant. They could barely check out a book on defensive jinxes without being asked what trouble they were planning to cause. It was infuriating. 

For lack of an opportunity to research how to free him from the diary, Hermione had, with his help, occupied her free time by making a number of little friends that might prove useful. There was of course the expertly broken and powerful Harry Potter, who had trusted Hermione so completely as soon as Tom had revealed their Parseltongue abilities. It was almost disturbingly easy to see inside Harry’s mind, but he at least seemed to be assimilating Lord Voldemort’s memories fairly well, and Tom was glad he could check up on the inside of his head. It would be useful. After all knowledge was power. The horcrux inside Harry, which Tom wasn't entirely sure was actually sentient, had the presence of mind left to shield its more harmful memories from the child he was parasitising. Harry seemed to be growing oddly fond of the memories, though he had no idea where they came from, which Tom found unendingly amusing and Hermione thought was stupid of him. They made sure to be there whenever he wanted to talk, and their joint 'research' into magic woven into the school gave them plenty of opportunities to carve out a niche in his life. It was going well so far. 

Harry Potter, however, was not the only one Tom and Hermione had managed to establish the beginnings of a ‘friendship’ with. Joining the well connected Susan Bones and Blaise Zabini in what would one day become Hermione’s inner circle were Theodore Nott, that mudblood Terrence Boot and a Slytherin girl called Millicent Bulstrode (though the somewhat amusing introduction “Call me Millie or die by my hand” suggested that she had issues with her given name. Tom might be tempted to sympathise if he was capable of it). Among this number was also, much to Tom’s surprise, Ronald Weasley. At first Tom accepted his presence purely because Harry seemed to like him, but much to Tom’s surprise he was both a goldmine when it came to current light leaning politics and a truly inspired chess player. He reminded Tom slightly of Mulciber. Lazy, to be sure, but whip smart when it suited him and stunningly gifted at strategy, Mulciber had been among the least insipid of Tom’s year mates. Ronald Weasley seemed to be cut from the same cloth, though he doubted that the allusion would be taken well by the child. It was an interesting little group they had gathered so far, and Hermione was enjoying having such an extended group of friends. Tom approved. They would make more than adequate followers when the time came. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment, did you like it? I enjoyed writing it even if it was a bit of a transitional chapter... 
> 
> Speaking of transitions, I feel like I should publicly disavow JKR's awful opinions on the transgender community here as well as on my other HP fic. Her recent media-storm actually really affected my relationship with the whole extended universe and it still makes me feel vaguely ill whenever I spend too long thinking about it. This might be a HP fanfic but I don't support JKR in any way, shape or form. Trans people are just that, people, and I support them. If you don't, feel free to fuck right off at this point. Any comments from transphobes will be removed, as will any defence of JKR. She knew EXACTLY what she was saying with her tweets and the anti-trans essay she wrote afterwards. I support trans rights and always will. 
> 
> That aside, I'd love your thoughts and feelings on the chapter or the story in general. Did you like Tom's reaction to Snape? How do you think he'll respond to our favourite defence teacher? Leave a comment, they feed the muse and encourage faster updates. 
> 
> Warning: Some brief Draco Malfoy hurting will take place next chapter (sorry DeDeDonuts)


	17. The First Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts on the first year class.

Lord Voldemort enjoyed teaching at Hogwarts. It had been a long forgotten ambition of his youth until opportunity struck when whispers about the stone reached him. It’s vulnerability was a trap from Dumbledore, that much was obvious, but it was a trap Lord Voldemort could twist to his advantage. He had done away with the fool occupant of this body easily enough on meeting him, only to discover to his delight that he had been a professor at Hogwarts, however irrelevant a subject he taught. Now he was teaching defence, and finding it rather offensive he’d ever even had a war to fight, if the curriculum had been this much of a disaster since Merrythought had stepped down. It was embarrassing, though far more so for his death eaters than himself. He’d certainly never had much trouble cutting down Dumbledore’s little followers. Speaking of which, he was about to meet his downfall rather more literally than he’d ever planned to. _Harry Potter_ was a first year. 

As soon as the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs arrived he picked the child out instantly. Those brilliant green eyes of his had been the last thing Lord Voldemort had seen, and he would not be likely to forget them. The unblinking, burning colour of the killing curse. It had seemed tragically appropriate at the time. The next thing he noticed about the boy was his wrists. Thin, brittle looking, shamefully familiar. He looked like Lord Voldemort had a lifetime ago, before he had shed his original name or even discovered what made him _special_. It would have rankled to understand at all if his hadn’t presented so obvious a way into the boy’s trust. Their eyes met and his downfall looked away, slumping down to rest his head on his hands on the desk. Lord Voldemort dismissed the attitude (no doubt he had experienced Binns) and began his lecture. 

“The name of this class, so often called Defence Against The Dark Artes, might more accurately be called Defence alone for the first four years of your education. You are unlikely to encounter anything close to dark artes within the walls of Hogwarts, and nothing in this class will be able to defend you against it if you do. This year we will cover competitive duelling etiquette, strategy, basic defensive charms and hexes, and the first five protection spells any wizard or witch should learn. Today we will be assessing your woking theoretical knowledge of the subject with a standardised test. Does anyone have any questions?” He said, making sure every word cut through the silence that his class had fallen into. At the mention of his little quiz a ripple mixed of worry and outrage ran through the room, but no one seemed able to bring themselves to say anything about it to his face (sensible of them, he assumed it was Minerva’s quelling influence on her house. In his day there would have been yelling, from the little he knew of lessons with the lions) 

A redhead raised his hand (he suspected it was a Weasley, Lord Voldemort had met far too many of them over the last week, but he hadn’t been paying attention to anyone but his downfall during the sorting so he couldn’t be sure) He nodded. “Sir, when are we doing the strategy portion of the course?” 

“After Samhain, though there is a portion of the exam you’ll sit today that focuses on it.” Probably-yet-another-Weasley smiled slightly and Lord Voldemort made a mental note to pay attention to him. That was a confident expression, and a cunning strategist was always one to watch no matter their house tie. 

If the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff first year tests proved mildly enlightening about the bright talents of the year, they were nothing to the first Ravenclaw/Slytherin class he had. He Had heard the argument between the current Malfoy and a girl out in the corridor before the class, and it only got more entertaining from there. He’d heard Malfoy first. 

“Really Theo? Standing around with the filth?” The cut glass accent and pureblood superiority identified the speaker instantly. He had spent too much time around Abraxas and later Lucius to mistake it as anything but the patented Malfoy drawl. Then the girl had replied. 

“But you’ve only just got here Malfoy. It’s hardly Theo’s fault you came over.” Someone laughed, and Lord Voldemort found himself unwillingly entertained. He cast a quick set of charms at the door that would make it transparent in his direction and amplify the sound beyond it. Then he sat back to watch the show unfold. Malfoys had always been far too easy to rile up, however influential (and wealthy) they proved themselves as allies. 

“How dare you speak to me that way? My father—” Lord Voldemort might have snorted then, though thankfully there were no witnesses to the fact. The child was a carbon copy of Lucius. He’d heard the exact same words the first time he’d ever met the brash little fool, and he’d been too busy laughing at Abraxas for it to even bother torturing the young man for slighting him. The Ravenclaw girl, whoever she was, had clearly realised what she was dealing with. 

“He’s all you have, isn’t he Malfoy?” She said softly. “Your bigot of a father and that precious name he gave you.” She was good, this girl. Identifying a weakness so publicly was admirable, even in so evident a mudblood-lover. He found himself entertained, and decided against beginning class on time. He wanted to see how this played out. 

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand the importance of House Malfoy you filthy little mudblood.” Sniffed the little carbon copy Malfoy. 

“Obviously.” The girl agreed with ease, “You’re family means nothing to a mudblood like me, because from where I’m standing you’re a weak little squib hiding behind his father’s money.” 

Lord Voldemort blinked, surprised. The girl openly admitted being mudblood, but used the slur herself. She was vicious as a Slytherin but he could see her tie as well as any, and it didn’t appear to be green. She had turned at least two of the Slytherin boys against Malfoy, judging from how they were standing, but there were Ravenclaws laughing along too, so she was not making unlikely friends out of isolation. Strangest of all, she held her wand, now in her hand and pointed at Malfoy’s face, like a seasoned duellist. The flash of magic that followed was undoubtedly a silencing spell, and Lord Voldemort raised an eyebrow. A fifth year charm.She really was _good_. 

He couldn’t let a talent like that go to the light side, that was for sure, and Dumbledore would undoubtedly snatch her up for his precious _Order_ if given the opportunity. Thus decided, he opened the door to his classroom with a wave of his hand and cancelled the spells he had placed on it. After his opening speech the girl’s hand shot into the air, as did Malfoy’s desperate one, but he ignored the boy. The charm would probably wear off by the end of the day, and he wasn’t even supposed to know it had been cast in the first place. He looked at the girl, finding her eyes already fixed on him. “Yes Miss…” He began. 

“Hermione Granger Sir,” She said, watching his face carefully as she did so. Lord Voldemort let none of his thoughts on so common a name show, smiling slightly instead. “I was wondering what exactly defines dark artes in the first place.” Lord Voldemort blinked once, brow rising. It was almost word for word what he had asked Merrythought in his own first defence class. 

“They are _classified_ as magics that require malevolent intent to cast.” He said, wondering if the clever little mudblood would pick up on the wording. She looked at him, a considering expression forming, and then nodded. 

“Thank you for clearing that up professor, some of the definitions I’ve read are much more confusing.” Said Granger, and Lord Voldemort took note. She had already gone looking for this information, this odd, powerful little witch, and found different information than the ministry classification when she had been at Hogwarts less than a week. He would have to keep an eye on her too. 

“I’m glad to hear you’re taking such an interest in my subject Miss Granger. I suspect you’ll be more than adequately prepared for my placement test. 

For the rest of the lesson the silence was broken only by scratching quills and the odd, frustrated sigh. Miss Hermione Granger didn’t pause at a single question, and Lord Voldemort pointedly collected her paper last. He wanted to see exactly how much the vicious little girl already knew, and this would at least be a start. 

* * *

Severus had honestly tried not to see it, but by the third week of the year the parallels were already uncanny. It was enough some days that he pushed everything behind his occlumency shields rather than work through the old wounds those four first years had managed to reopen simply by existing. Potter, as arrogant as his father and famous to boot, pureblood Zabini with his notoriously dangerous family, quietly brilliant Nott, who faded into the background unless you were paying attention and the youngest Weasley boy, apparently a chess fiend, to complete the ghastly little quartet. Watching the four of them interact was viciously painful, echoes of his school days springing up at every corner. Severus had to suppress a twitch every time he heard Zabini or Weasley's cry of "Oi, Potter," echoing across the courtyard. The only character missing from the tableaux was his own.

The first years were always an issue, but this year group in particular seemed comprised of fools and menaces to the general population the likes of which Severus hadn't seen in years. True, those blasted Weasley Twins were worse, but they were only two blots, however dark, on a mostly tolerable year group. These eleven year olds were, while less individually headache inducing, cumulatively far worse. Parallels to his own youth aside, Severus feared for the future of wizarding Britain. His Slytherins were a mostly well behaved, if much more fractured as a group than usual. Zabini and Nott (or Black and Lupin II respectively, on Severus' darker days) were forming something of a splinter group within the Slytherin cohort, in no small part because they had taken a strong dislike to his godson. Severus was monitoring this closely, not willing to allow Draco to assume his own role in the sordid reenactment of his school days Potter's presence seemed to have incited. 

Unfortunately he did, however reluctantly, understand their point of view. His godson Draco, while good at potions and easily the best in Snape's dreaded Slytherin/Gryffindor first year class, was a loudmouth little brat who was far to quick to bring Lucius' name into arguments. Severus was fond of the boy on Lucius's account, but his old friend had clearly imparted more familial egotism than decorum to the child. He would have to write to Narcissa about it. The rest of the Slytherins were the usual collection of purebloods, except for Tracy Davis, who had so far managed to keep her half blood status rather quiet, which he could understand perfectly well. Yes, the first year Slytherins were acceptable. It was, as usual, the other houses causing the issues.

The Gryffindors were exactly as terrible as he had feared they would be. Potter might actually be /more/ insolent than Severus had expected and the rest were ready to laugh at his poor attempts at humour like the sycophants they were. The latest Weasley had inherited none of the skill of his oldest brother or the odd dedication of the one in fifth year. Thankfully he hadn't inherited the Twins' knack for horrible explosions either, so it could, Severus supposed, be worse. Unfortunately Seamus Finnegan made up for that particular small mercy. Severus didn't exactly know how that idiot boy was able to create an explosive reaction with flobberworm mucus (one of the world's most stable potions ingredients) but he undeniably had. Longbottom too was a walking disaster of a wizard who would, Severus was sure, poison himself and the rest of the class in a freak accident before producing a decent potion. Yes, the Slytherin/Gryffindor first year class was even more of a bloody nightmare than usual.

The Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff class was better, if only marginally. Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott of Hufflepuff were tolerably competent in his class, and as usual their house as a whole caused very little trouble when compared to the other three. Then there was Ravenclaw. Muggleborn Terrance Boot was a menace in the potions classroom rivalled only by Longbottom in Gryffindor, not because he was bad at the subject but because he could not seem to understand that class was not the time to experiment with the potions method Severus provided. Mandy Brocklehurst was quite severely lacking in time management skills and had consequently poor potions despite what Severus assumed were her best efforts, and Anthony Goldstein thought he was far better than he actually was. It hadn’t caused problems yet but potions didn't care about the brewer's ego, so it was only a matter of time before something went badly wrong. Padma Patil had obviously been tutored, but lacked any passion for his subject and the others were varying degrees of competent, as he had come to expect from Ravenclaws.

Then there was Miss Hermione Granger, darling of the entire teaching staff. She got her own category, as Severus wasn't quite sure what to make of her. Hermione Granger was a supremely gifted muggleborn Ravenclaw regarded by Filius and Minerva as almost the second coming of Rowena herself. Aurora was fond of her, Pomona sang her praises and Quirinius had taken a definite shine to her as well, often pulling her aside to recommend a book or sign another pass for the restricted section, which the girl seemed to have a dedicated and unhealthy interest in. 

She was as brilliant at potions as she was at everything else too, already a regular face at his office hours. She seemed to be altering the cure for boils a little differently each week to see how each ingredient reacted with the others in different amounts. Severus had seen first one and then another notebook fill up with her neat columns of notes as she slowly put together how the potion worked from its base elements. It was a transfiguration specialist's approach to his subject if ever he had seen one, he'd said as much to Minerva. He ought to have been thrilled to teach such a brilliant student, and the pure part of him that loved only potions was. At first Severus had thought her another reminder of his school days. A painful reminder of his biggest mistake and his closest friend. A reminder of Lily. He was no longer sure that was true. There was something he couldn't put his finger on about the child that just seemed _wrong_.

Severus had spent his whole life watching people, first as a survival technique and then as a habit, and he had noticed something subtly off about the bright little witch. She was set somehow apart from the others in her year, and indeed her friendship groups, by more than just her obvious brilliance. Her wand was never far from her hand, her magic coiled in preparation for an attack that never came. She was uncomfortably watchful, oddly composed and all together not what even the most intelligent first year ought to be. Her expressions were also far too quick to smooth into a small polite smile, and Severus could recognise a mask when he saw one. He didn't know what lurked behind her facade of perfect student, but he knew something did, and that worried him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this might be the last chapter for a little while, and I might not reply instantly to any comments (please feel free to leave them, I will definitely read them all, but my replies might be a bit slow). This is because I am in the middle of a third draft of my original novel (it's going well) and ON TOP OF THAT I just got some funding to adapt one of my original short stories into a (small) film!! 
> 
> It's a FREAKING AWESOME opportunity but it also means I'll be super busy for the next month or so. I have to write the screenplay properly and story board the whole thing and sort out actors and a crew and hopefully start filming all before spring kicks in properly (it's set in winter and this is an important plot point) so I won't have as much, if any, time for this fanfic. I want to do it justice so I won't write anything for it while I'm in such a rush. 
> 
> Please leave your thoughts. I always love to hear them and I appreciate every single one!! What did you think of Lord Voldemort's point of view??????? What did you think of Snape's??? Let me know in the comments. Would you like to see more from either of them in the future?

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! If you did leave a comment. What do you think is going to happen next? I always love to read your comments and they give me a massive incentive to write. 
> 
> Updates will be sporadic (consider this a warning)


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